None of what you said is true. Most astronauts are not superb pilots or hardened to the stresses of military combat, or even particularly adept at teaching. They're mostly scientists with reasonably good physical fitness, they are not super people.
It's called rhetoric, and I was making a point. Being "in the space program" is not the same as being program-specific astronaut, obviously. But I know you know what I meant: someone who makes it on the very, very short list of people will be allowed to fly into space are way, way more hireable in a huge range of jobs than, say, me. Or most anybody else I know.
The second argument is wrong, because if you open up the ammo-can without an order, you go straight to jail.
But here in the US, people who use guns illegally (say, to threaten or kill someone) also are supposed to go to jail. The problem is that people like that are frequently right back out of jail, and no less sensible (if not actually worse) than when they went in. We're talking, here, about people who choose to act violently, without regard for the consequences. You say that you may have the occasional Swiss who is mentally broken enough to reach for the gun - but that it rarely happens. I'd suggest that the mentally broken people are just as rare in the US, but it's the celebration of violence and expectation of leniency that fuels the problem - not which tool the violent person is going to choose to use. Just the other day, we had a crazy domestic situation where a guy threw his daughter off a bridge onto a highway, and then followed her (amazingly, she lived, happily, he did not). Might that have ended differently if he'd had a gun? Possibly. Is that (other than being dramatic) a common problem in a country of hundreds of millions of people? No. Not nearly as common as reckless driving, knifings, beatings, and other non-gun-related injuries and deaths.
Don't be a dipshit. The purpose of a gun is to kill shit. The purpose of a car is to drive from point A to point B. Hardly an equitable comparison.
No, the purpose of any tool is that purpose for which its owner intends. Some people buy a machete to clear brush, and some people buy a machete to cut off people's hands in gang enforcement. The purpose of the machete is to cut - as to what it cuts, and for what purpose, the machete itself doesn't care.
The purpose of a car is to move cargo (human or otherwise). But what if I buy a car strictly for sole purpose of using it to rob banks? Or to drive across town and blow it up in a neighborhood I don't like?
I know a guy that uses a 12-gauge shotgun to (are you ready?) harvest mistletoe out of trees, 35-feet up off the ground. It's a tool. It has no "purpose" of its own, but it has uses/dangers (just like a 2000-pound piece of steel and plastic rolling down the highway at 70mph) that require human guidance. It's the humans, not the tools, that have purpose. That's a more complex topic, hard to regulate or grapple with, and so people take the lazy route out and blame inanimate objects. Cars and guns are perfectly equitable comparison: the both just sit there until a person does something with them, and they can both be used to save, or end, lives.
baseball bats are made for hitting baseballs, kitchen knives are made for preparing food and occasionally opening envelopes, and guns are made for moving little pieces of metal very fast into people.
A baseball bat is actually just an optimized club. Its purpose is to violently intercept a round, mostly organic object, and radically alter its inertia. The energy delivered is tremendous, and hence its appeal as an alternative weapon. But wooden clubs go way, way back - and no doubt first saw action as weapons: to hunt or defend against animals (bipedal and otherwise). Most of the hit-the-object-with-a-stick games go back to combat training or simulation in one form or another. It's just that the season lasts longer when both teams survive.
As for kitchen knives: a special case of all things with sharp edges. Originally put to use to: kill, main, dismember, chop up, etc. There's a reason that versions of knives (like machetes) remain such fearson weapons in the third world: they're cheap, effective, and you don't need to reload. And, you can claim that it's in your car because you need it at work (say, cutting cane or whatnot). But edged tools are designed to separate material into pieces. Who uses it, and on what, is completely beside the point.
Guns, on the other hand, are complicated devices of recent invention.
If by "recent" you mean "over 600 years ago," then you're right. But the since you cited the Bronze Age when talking about knives, it seems that 2000 years is your magic number for making a weapon natural, OK, and reasonable for everyone to have or use. I, though, think that any tool that projects or enhances your personal flesh-and-bone native self is pretty much philosophically neutral, and it's what you choose to do with it, not how old the technology is, that merits discussion. Certainly the crossbow, sling, spear, and other goodies go back longer than firearms... where do you draw the line? Maybe there's no point in doing so, and we should focus instead on culture, not culture's hardware?
they were designed on the concept of shooting people
Except, I use mine to put dinner on the table. I actually, literally, shoot things and then eat them. With some fava beans, and a nice Chianti. Seriously: quail, venison, turkey, pheasant... you can't eat better meat, and you'll never appreciate it more than when you (and your dog, in my case) get your hands/paws bloody along the way. It's a connection to reality that most people never, ever make. And the tools I use to quickly dispatch game are guns. Not pointy sticks, not deadfall traps, not poison, not fire, not clubbing over the head - nope: high speed lead objects, some applied physics, and dinner.
I've also used a gun to run off a seriously broken, drug-addled person that was beating our sliding glass door at 2:00AM. I have no doubts that the city police would have been 15 minutes arriving on the scene, and the guy's behavior was truly frightening - and likely to wind up in several people getting hurt. Brandishing a shotgun like I meant it took care of things, and the police found him sneaking out the back of the neighborhood's woods about 30 minutes later. He was trying to get into our house because they were already looking for him, and he knew it. I can't imagine the consequences otherwise, but the same tool that I use to put tasty dinner on the table helped keep that guy out of our house. And should he be out on the street again (no doubt he is), I'm sure that somewhere in the back of his mind is the thought that he'll never know when some house he might want to invade is going to be the end of him. That's a deterrent, and it works just as well on the neighborhood scale as it does internationally.
Guns are fundamentally different from the other items you mentioned, which is why they're treated differently.
But they're not so much, really, and to the extent that they are, it'
Go after the legit guys, the gun makers, instead of the guys who are already intending to break the law.
So, you're also cool with going after "legit" guys like Ford or General Motors? After all, convicted drunk drivers who aren't supposed to drive can still pick up keys and drive anyway... so we'd better deprive everyone of cars, just in case. Especially since more people are killed with cars than with guns. Oh: and don't forget baseball bats, kitchen knives, etc. There are all sorts of people out there "intending to break the law" with those tools, too.
Oh, wait: here's a thought. The vast majority of people who kill with guns are recidivist, repeat criminals. Maybe they shouldn't be walking around in your neighborhood in the first place?
By the way, what's your angle on going after the manufacturer of a legal product than can only hurt someone when someone picks it and deliberately uses it in that way? Check in with places like Africa and Central America, where gangs there routinely kill people with machetes, knives, and bottles of gasoline. Do you think that people intent on that sort of terrorizing care, at all, what you think about their chosen tools? I can tell you one thing they do care about: not knowing which business or household may be able to defend itself. In states like Florida, the right to carry has reduced violent crime. In places like Australia, where they've confiscated everyone's guns, violent crime has gone up, as criminals can act with impunity. The exact opposite of what the gun control people wanted (no matter how many times they're told that's what's going to happen).
If guns in personal possesion are such a problem, how do places like Switzerland, where there are more guns per household than in the US manage to have less violent crime? Not by regulating hardware, but by improving software: they have a real educational system with actual standards, they don't tolerate crime, and their culture doesn't celebrate thuggishness as a fashion. And, of course, violent criminals there know that there is a strong possibility of getting shot down like a dog while being a violent criminal: that has a wonderful impact on career choice.
Hey, I'm relaxed. This whole thread is based on me cracking a joke! Of course it's based on my personal experience with posters here on their recurring theme of "you dumb/too-powerful/fascist/etc Americans," and certainly plenty of that has come along with comparisons to how NOT all of those things Canadians are. Same from Europe, of course... but the whole point of the post was to have a chuckle over the Canadian proposal to proctologically examine every packet that hits your web browser, even as we (in the States) get ribbed for things (sometimes by Canadians) that I consider way, way less intrusive.
As for my "delusional babble" about this sort of thing happening more easily in countries where participation in daily life by, regulation of more industries/behavior/trade/activities by, and public dependence upon government runs deeper and wider... there's nothing delusional about that. And in comparing the reach and regulatory breadth of Canadian government with the US, it's simply no surprise that legislators there would propose something like what's being discussed here. I'm not off base making that observation, and I'm not delusional for enjoying the irony (relative to the "you [insert Orwellian adjective] Americans" comments that do indeed flow from up north in a lot of comments/threads here on slashdot).
Um, I'm not sure what kind of logic they teach you down there, but even if this were to pass (highly unlikely), it won't make "the U.S." any less evil or Orwellian. It's not a relative thing.
Well, let's see. Speaking of who teaches who what, I'm wondering what you think we're actually called, that you feel the need to put "the U.S." in quotes. Odd. Maybe that's how you talk about us in "Canada."
My point, though, is that many Canadian posters here on slashdot like to use phrases like "you Americans," and imply some sort of sweeping societal failure south of the border, and some sort of prevailing ethical/governmental/cultural superiority north thereof. I really don't care whether this bit of silliness passes or not... the funny thing is that it's at least as draconian as anything that's been contemplated here, and seems to be born of a more paternalistic or nanny-state mentality that normally seems to be a point of pride, but which, when applied to network monitoring is suddenly shocking. But that's what socializing businesses and utilities does, so I'm finding it mildly amusing to have it seem so jarring to Canadian sensibilities to contemplate something that seems like such a natural outgrowth of the more socialist posture of your government. We're not talking about what impact it might have on US law enforcement's mission or legal options - we're talking about pot calling the kettle black.
The post's joking tone was fairly obvious, but not to a lot of people, I think. My response was as much for the wider audience as it was for the poster who cracked the joke. I do get it, though!
...is that there isn't much need for Astronauts in our new service-based economy, so they're gonna have a hell of a time finding a new job
Well, then there hasn't been a need ever, if that's how you look at it. But try this instead: these are some of the smartest, most physically and intellectually hardy, well-rounded people on the planet. Every one of them is better equipped to teach than most teachers, better able to fly than most pilots, better able to handle stress than most soldiers/firefighters/police, better able to understand and work with complex systems than most engineers... somehow I think that someone with those skills is hardly going to be working at, well, Disney's Space Mountain ride. There are plenty of systems engineers I know making six figures that would love to have one of these folks as a boss. Just the aerospace defense area alone could gobble up the entire astronaut-trained team in any one month's hiring cycle.
Now... does holding analysis review meetings quite measure up to flying to the moon? No. Does grading orbital mechanics term papers have quite the same panache as shrieking into LEO with a billion dollar payload? No. Is my job boring? Most of the time. They'll deal with it just fine.
If they believed in WMDs, there was clearly a really strong case for holding off a few weeks. They could have had a report backing their case to bring the Europeans and perhaps the Russians on-side and at least persuade the Arab states to passively support the invasion. Remember, waiting for that report was the demand the French were explicitly making for support in the security council.
No so! The French explicitly said that there was no circumstance under which they would agree to the use of force against Saddam's regime, ever. They said that they would use their security council veto against any resolution, regardless, that expressly called for the forcible removal of that regime. Their decision did not hinge on the outcome of a report (which could never have been complete without the cooperation of Saddam's government, which was never going to happen). To the contrary: indications are that Saddam himself thought he had weapons that he didn't have. The French, and everyone else, thought so too. But there was too much money changing hands with Saddam for them to want to see him removed, and they said they'd oppose any use of force, ever, to remove him. It's not any more complicated than that, so why would anyone who considered Saddam a threat wait around for the French to say anything differently?
How is it politically incorrect to say that you eat what you shoot ? The very purpose of hunting is to get something to eat, isn't it ? And even if you just hunt for fun, it would be wastefull to leave the dead animals behind, wouldn't it?
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I like eating meat. I enjoy the act of hunting, and all of the tradition, dogs, equipment, and social conventions that surround it. I surely don't hunt for the sake of just killing critters (unless we're talking about, say, ground hogs that are destroying crops). I'm referring to political incorrectness in the sense that other people find these things to be offensive (like, eating meat at all, or hunting for it), and I like to poke fun at those people by not being shy about hunting.
The whole "meat is murder" crowd (many of which still seem to enjoy nice leather shoes) don't just have a bias - they're just rabidly against eating meat, and they're that much louder about people like me that are personally willing to actually kill the animals that we eat. I guess that's just too much reality for them or something. But to clarify: I take very seriously the act of hunting, and I strive to always make sure that bird, deer, or fish is killed as quickly and humanely as possible - and that I cook it as deliciously as possible, and with as many friends and as good a bottle of wine as possible. So: I don't find killing or eating meat incorrect in any way - but I like to bring it up sometimes because I know it makes the crazies, well, crazy.
Thanks for asking, as I prefer that over leaving you with the impression you've already formed (which seems to have been derived from, I don't know, episodes of The Dukes of Hazard or something).
I (and my wife) own (or are slaves to, dependin on how you look at it) two prize German Shorthaired Pointers. "Prize," in the sense that they are stellar bird dogs from champion lines, and are able to locate a hunkered down upland game bird (a quail, pheasant, partridge or other tasty favorite) in wet grass from 50 yards away. It's spectacular to watch them work a farmer's field or pasture. Their job is to show us where the birds are without spooking them off. We (my wife and I, or whomever is out with us), then poke around in the cover until the birds flush up. This happens very quickly, and you have to a very good shot to quickly dispatch the birds. When you miss, the look of reproachment from the dogs is, well, almost unbearable.
So, to avoid that bit of melodrama, and more importantly, to avoid having to go to the grocery store to buy wildy inferior, chemically-treated poultry for dinner, we go to the range. This means shooting a clay pigeons thrown by very expensive machinery, but it's good practice for fast birds.
The signature file also, of course, is a larger reminder simply to practice something to the point of being good at it before you start letting others depend on your performance. Plus, of course, the sheer political incorrectness of mentioning that I eat birds, which I shoot, and have dogs that help me do it, is no end of fun (despite the flames that sometimes get posted).
Please, and I mean this, ask any questions you might have!
I'm amazed at the consistency with which the biggest whiners post anonymously. Slashdot never did a better thing than to mark such posters as cowards.
Regardless:
Did patents encourage the "invention" of UNIX, VMS, CP/M, QDOS, BEOS etc? NO!
You're missing the point (mostly, of my comments on the post to which I was replying, which was proposing collective/communal R&D funded by the public in lieu of private enterprise). Personal ambition to see a better solution (whether out of a Linus-Torvalds-style mission like Linux, or a traditional capitalist-style pursuit of designing and profiting from a better mousetrap). People who want something different or better, or believe that they can make a living by inventing and/or producing the same for others' use, are innovators. Some innovations are expensive to create - in terms of time, materials, people, etc, and it simply can't all be charity work. The need for better systems and software causes people to dream them up and produce them. They shouldn't be punished for doing so by watching someone else avoid all the costs and reap all the rewards.
Property can be stolen, somebody reusing an idea does not deprive the originator of that idea, it is not theft!
I imagine that you're listening to pirated music while you're typing, right? Semantics and hair splitting are the last resort of those that would make intellectual slaves out of creative people. Some innovations (highly complex drugs, for example) don't just pop out of someone's head. It takes millions, billions of dollars for some "ideas" to become viable. That has to be protected, or it just simply won't happen. Patents are the mechanism.
I'm a capitalist, cheap labor works for me
Again, you're missing the point. Cheap labor doesn't invent quantum computing interfaces or new anti-biotics.
These generally aren't the people who collect on their work, thanks to the multitude of pompous assholes that take all the credit for themselves.
Smart people don't work for people that won't reward them. Being "pompous" doesn't get you anything: writing checks does. If you are an innovator, and go to work (and take money from!) someone with whom you've reached some arrangement on patents or copyrights... what's to complain about? Or, are you talking about actual contract fraud? That's not in the scope of this thread, and is probably not what you mean.
No, that's called job satisfaction and individuals are free to seek employment elsewhere
Yeah, and your point is? If you want to work somewhere that owns your patents when you leave, then that's your decision. If you want to own your own patents, you work under different arrangements, which are available. That's not really a difficult concept.
[I'm betting you could hire a doctor and buy a defibulator for every plane a lot cheaper than dumping even ONE load of fuel like that per year.]
Pay up. 85% of the fuel on a 757 costs $16000. A defib is $3000, and a doctor is $152000/year (although a nurse or EMT is 1/4th of that, its still more expensive).
Ok, then I'll just stick with the A380 or a trans-Pacific 747-stretch. I'm sure you got my point (though I give you full credit for actually doing some math!). No good way to do math, though, on the dumping of fuel over farmland or water... there's just no nice way to handle that qualitative (rather than quantitative) problem. Other than... just don't do it. Apples and Oranges, though, up against someone about to have an M.I. five minutes out of the airport.
If you mean that patents prevent your competitors from using your invention without having to bear the costs of inventing a competing technology themselves, then, yes. But company X making profit off of their own invention means that company Y will need to innovate and compete by arriving at a better way to solve the problem (and thus win back those customers). Patents encourage the creative innovation of competing (and superior) patentable products/concepts/practices.
Since the _only_ valid societal rationale for patents to exist is to promote the public good
Really? I would think that being able to benefit from your labor and creativity is a strong incentive. Strong enough that the person who does it best gets rewarded accordingly, and only indirectly (though substantially) does the public benefit. The public benefit is frosting on the cake. Protection of an individual's claim to their own work is the heart of it.
it would be a LOT more simple & straightforward to promote innovation if society collectively paid a lot of smart people to create useful ideas
Excellent idea, Citizen Comrade! Why, in countries where that's been the practice, we see fantastic displays of innovation in the areas of stealing IP and technologies from those private innovators elsewhere that are actually getting it done faster, better, and with better-paid people in a higher standard of living. I'm sure some of the community-based researchers in North Korea, or perhaps the ones that prospered so well in the Sovier Union, would disagree with me, me being a clueless Yankee and all.
The anti-competitive effect of patents just turns out to be prone to abuse
Though I'd say that the abuse of the best and brightest people in any collective setting is a much more pervasive problem. In any academic, or even private "team"-based setting where a group of people are tasked with a complex goal, some small percentage of brighter bulbs will always be the people doing the heavy lifting and the creative thinking that actually moves the project forward. The only way not to burn people like that out is a merit-based system that rewards and encourages going the extra mile on (say) research and development. Your system would work fine, as long as the minority of the research communinity that actually innovates gets some sort of reward (and knows they will be getting some sort of reward) for their unique innovations. Oh, wait, that's called a patent and the right to use it.
The only time I have heard of anyone dumping their fuel on purpose is when they were about to make an emergency/crash landing (without landing gear cause it was stuck, or because of some other problem
Just a few years back I was flying out of O'Hare, and a the 757 I was on dumped (according to the pilot) about 85% of its fuel (and we were headed to San Fransisco, so even if they didn't have it completely filled up, you know it was a whole lotta fuel) because: one of the passengers was having some chest pain. They dumped over the Great Plains, turned around, and landed back at O'Hare, by which time the passenger said he was feeling much better, thank you anyway.
I'm betting you could hire a doctor and buy a defibulator for every plane a lot cheaper than dumping even ONE load of fuel like that per year. Never mind the corn field it probably all landed on.
Though I don't doubt that there is some profit motive, the market for this can't be the only motivator.
No, it's not about the market for the type of aircraft that he's actually flying on this trip - but of course it's about showcasing his team's technical skills and creativity. It's marketing, and it's all about keeping the name in the press. Certainly there's proof of concept and lots to learn, but he's got a lot of other irons in the fire, too. It's a lot like when a major movie studio makes an Oscar-winning "art" film that absolutely loses money directly, but which serves the companies larger efforts and bottom line because of credibility.
How does it feel to be winning abroad but losing at home?
Hmmm. Can't imagine what you mean. Losing to whom, by what standard?
And you, being the enlightened American, are not embarrassed by the firebombing of innocent civilians in Tokyo or the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Actually, no, I'm not. Because we didn't start the conflict, and because even as they knew their abject aggression throughout the Pacific was a lost cause, the Japanese refused to cease hostilities. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put a stop to the war, and saved both the allies and the Japanese from the bloody grind of an invasion. Why would we be embarrassed about ending a war that the Japanese started by raiding througout the Pacific, enslaving people in Korea, China, and throughout the South Pacific, and then (just to make sure that we might not get in the way), attacking the US Navy in Hawaii?
Japanese are there to rebuild the bridges and roads
Right. And they are armed and trained to shoot to defend themselves, and coordinate with other forces to call in air strikes or whatever else they need to suppress the insurgents that seek to deprive the Iraqi people of things like their bridges, their police, and their vote. And their mission there is to help stabilize a place that Saddam completely sacrificed to his own military and political ambitions. Remember how he started a war with Iran (over a million dead), or invaded Kuwait? Or, even after being kicked out of Kuwait, agreed to sell his oil to the world in exchange for things like food... but then turned those sales instead into military hardware, palaces, and tangible financial support for nice folks like Hamas, Hezbollah... you get the idea.
Hmm, we agree on something
If, by that clumsy bit of sarcasm, you're implying that the US is some sort of imperial force, why not ask the very same Japanese you're talking about, and ask how imperial we've been there? Or in Germany? Or in Kuwait? Or Croatia? Honestly, sometimes it would be easier if our purposes were as evil as you'd like to pretend they were. But no, we get to do the dirty work, and most of the rest of the world just gets to complain about not getting enough opportunities to tell us how to put our resources, people, and productivity to work on other people's behalf.
Ask the people in Iraq how they felt leaving the voting polls last month, or ask the people in Lebanon where they got the inspiration to finally speak up and stop being puppets to Syria... it's the actions we've taken in Iraq that have changed the direction in that part of the world. Please note that Lybia gave up their nuke ambitions, and are going to find their way back into the legitimate world - and not a shot fired or a US soldier on the ground. Why? Because we did indeed act in the name of freedom. That you feel the need to put quotes around that word says a lot about you.
Talk about redefinition of language. What did Iraq ever do to Japan that could possibly provoke them to send troops in "self defence".
Wrong question. You should be asking what Saddam Hussein and his regime was doing to the stability of one of the most volatile regions in the world, and how that would impact countries like Japan, that have a vested interest in keeping that kind of mayhem at bay. The indirect impact of guys like Saddam are very, very familiar to the Japanese (they're still living down their reputation around the Pacific rim for being pretty much the same way 60 years ago).
It is self defense when you remove tyrants like that. Japan, and the rest of the world, will face less grief from here on out because of what's happening there now. Ask the folks in Lebanon (read the news today?) or the folks who just voted in Iraq (remember) if the long-term safety of the free world is helped or hindered by the peacekeepers working in Iraq, Japanese troops included.
To the extent that democratic, free people anywhere are expressly threatened by the acts of extremists in a multi-country, oil-fueled, arms-laden, hatred-powered region, it's self defense to pitch in and help deal with it.
can't speak to the embarassment part, but until our fearless leader convinced them to send troops to Iraq postwar Japan was content to be a very pacifist nation with a self-defense military
The Japanese forces in Iraq are there in a self-defense capacity. Making the world a more peaceful place, and less of a haven for murderous tyrants is self defense. For all of us.
If Japan has "pacifist" sensibilities, it is only in their over-reaction to having started a war. Deeper, more culturally, they are not a people to tolerate threats, and certainly they have the sensibility to know that keeping the peace can mean going out and doing something about those that would violate the peace. There's nothing "turn the other cheek" about the way that Japanese law enforcement deals with threatening people, and there's nothing philosophically different between that and stepping out with other countries to reduce larger threats.
I can easily imagine that Japan may be able to seriously leverage the commercial use of space the way the current corrupt leadership in the US cannot. What mean if the Japanese seriously started space based businesses while the US did not?
What country has even come close to what the U.S. has done to further the world's commercial use of space? Our telecommunications pioneering alone lead the world into a new age. Of course Europe (and to a certain extent now, Asia) are catching up. But as country with an industrial focus in this area, it's no contest. Is the US focus in space spread around too awkwardly of late? Yes. I'm glad to see Bush's recent directives to NASA to focus some more riveting projects. Can't wait for more of the same.
Now, will Europe use an arrangement not unlike Airbus to actually get those governments directly into the business? Will the Japanese government become a bigger part of their country's corporate space business? Probably.
But: is some "corruption" (as the twit poster put it) keeping the US out of a healthy commercial role in space? Please. And, to your point: I didn't "refute" the post because it was so non-specific (non-meaningful, really) that there's nothing but anti-Americanism to refute. As nothing more than a cranky-sounding excuse to say that America is corrupt, I called that troll a troll.
As an American, all I have to say is, "leave it to the Japanese to take massive steps towards furthering the human race while the rest of us are stuck here fighting amongst ourselves."
Please be sure to pass that along to the Japanese troops that are in Iraq right now. Because they, like us, know that things like space exploration, and liberating places like Iraq from corrupt regimes are not mutually exclusive. Read the damn news, why don't you? The Japanese are still embarassed by the last war they started, but they understand the need to get involved the "fighting amongst ourselves" so that it can be stopped. Doing so, just as ending the Soviet rule of Eastern Europe, brings huge peace dividends: which we can spend in space (I hope!). Less turmoil, and fewer crazy tyrants with pet oilfields in the world is crucial if we want to really focus on things like space. But we can work on both at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
None of what you said is true. Most astronauts are not superb pilots or hardened to the stresses of military combat, or even particularly adept at teaching. They're mostly scientists with reasonably good physical fitness, they are not super people.
It's called rhetoric, and I was making a point. Being "in the space program" is not the same as being program-specific astronaut, obviously. But I know you know what I meant: someone who makes it on the very, very short list of people will be allowed to fly into space are way, way more hireable in a huge range of jobs than, say, me. Or most anybody else I know.
The second argument is wrong, because if you open up the ammo-can without an order, you go straight to jail.
But here in the US, people who use guns illegally (say, to threaten or kill someone) also are supposed to go to jail. The problem is that people like that are frequently right back out of jail, and no less sensible (if not actually worse) than when they went in. We're talking, here, about people who choose to act violently, without regard for the consequences. You say that you may have the occasional Swiss who is mentally broken enough to reach for the gun - but that it rarely happens. I'd suggest that the mentally broken people are just as rare in the US, but it's the celebration of violence and expectation of leniency that fuels the problem - not which tool the violent person is going to choose to use. Just the other day, we had a crazy domestic situation where a guy threw his daughter off a bridge onto a highway, and then followed her (amazingly, she lived, happily, he did not). Might that have ended differently if he'd had a gun? Possibly. Is that (other than being dramatic) a common problem in a country of hundreds of millions of people? No. Not nearly as common as reckless driving, knifings, beatings, and other non-gun-related injuries and deaths.
Don't be a dipshit. The purpose of a gun is to kill shit. The purpose of a car is to drive from point A to point B. Hardly an equitable comparison.
No, the purpose of any tool is that purpose for which its owner intends. Some people buy a machete to clear brush, and some people buy a machete to cut off people's hands in gang enforcement. The purpose of the machete is to cut - as to what it cuts, and for what purpose, the machete itself doesn't care.
The purpose of a car is to move cargo (human or otherwise). But what if I buy a car strictly for sole purpose of using it to rob banks? Or to drive across town and blow it up in a neighborhood I don't like?
I know a guy that uses a 12-gauge shotgun to (are you ready?) harvest mistletoe out of trees, 35-feet up off the ground. It's a tool. It has no "purpose" of its own, but it has uses/dangers (just like a 2000-pound piece of steel and plastic rolling down the highway at 70mph) that require human guidance. It's the humans, not the tools, that have purpose. That's a more complex topic, hard to regulate or grapple with, and so people take the lazy route out and blame inanimate objects. Cars and guns are perfectly equitable comparison: the both just sit there until a person does something with them, and they can both be used to save, or end, lives.
OK, you want to split hairs? Let's split hairs.
baseball bats are made for hitting baseballs, kitchen knives are made for preparing food and occasionally opening envelopes, and guns are made for moving little pieces of metal very fast into people.
A baseball bat is actually just an optimized club. Its purpose is to violently intercept a round, mostly organic object, and radically alter its inertia. The energy delivered is tremendous, and hence its appeal as an alternative weapon. But wooden clubs go way, way back - and no doubt first saw action as weapons: to hunt or defend against animals (bipedal and otherwise). Most of the hit-the-object-with-a-stick games go back to combat training or simulation in one form or another. It's just that the season lasts longer when both teams survive.
As for kitchen knives: a special case of all things with sharp edges. Originally put to use to: kill, main, dismember, chop up, etc. There's a reason that versions of knives (like machetes) remain such fearson weapons in the third world: they're cheap, effective, and you don't need to reload. And, you can claim that it's in your car because you need it at work (say, cutting cane or whatnot). But edged tools are designed to separate material into pieces. Who uses it, and on what, is completely beside the point.
Guns, on the other hand, are complicated devices of recent invention.
If by "recent" you mean "over 600 years ago," then you're right. But the since you cited the Bronze Age when talking about knives, it seems that 2000 years is your magic number for making a weapon natural, OK, and reasonable for everyone to have or use. I, though, think that any tool that projects or enhances your personal flesh-and-bone native self is pretty much philosophically neutral, and it's what you choose to do with it, not how old the technology is, that merits discussion. Certainly the crossbow, sling, spear, and other goodies go back longer than firearms... where do you draw the line? Maybe there's no point in doing so, and we should focus instead on culture, not culture's hardware?
they were designed on the concept of shooting people
Except, I use mine to put dinner on the table. I actually, literally, shoot things and then eat them. With some fava beans, and a nice Chianti. Seriously: quail, venison, turkey, pheasant... you can't eat better meat, and you'll never appreciate it more than when you (and your dog, in my case) get your hands/paws bloody along the way. It's a connection to reality that most people never, ever make. And the tools I use to quickly dispatch game are guns. Not pointy sticks, not deadfall traps, not poison, not fire, not clubbing over the head - nope: high speed lead objects, some applied physics, and dinner.
I've also used a gun to run off a seriously broken, drug-addled person that was beating our sliding glass door at 2:00AM. I have no doubts that the city police would have been 15 minutes arriving on the scene, and the guy's behavior was truly frightening - and likely to wind up in several people getting hurt. Brandishing a shotgun like I meant it took care of things, and the police found him sneaking out the back of the neighborhood's woods about 30 minutes later. He was trying to get into our house because they were already looking for him, and he knew it. I can't imagine the consequences otherwise, but the same tool that I use to put tasty dinner on the table helped keep that guy out of our house. And should he be out on the street again (no doubt he is), I'm sure that somewhere in the back of his mind is the thought that he'll never know when some house he might want to invade is going to be the end of him. That's a deterrent, and it works just as well on the neighborhood scale as it does internationally.
Guns are fundamentally different from the other items you mentioned, which is why they're treated differently.
But they're not so much, really, and to the extent that they are, it'
Go after the legit guys, the gun makers, instead of the guys who are already intending to break the law.
So, you're also cool with going after "legit" guys like Ford or General Motors? After all, convicted drunk drivers who aren't supposed to drive can still pick up keys and drive anyway... so we'd better deprive everyone of cars, just in case. Especially since more people are killed with cars than with guns. Oh: and don't forget baseball bats, kitchen knives, etc. There are all sorts of people out there "intending to break the law" with those tools, too.
Oh, wait: here's a thought. The vast majority of people who kill with guns are recidivist, repeat criminals. Maybe they shouldn't be walking around in your neighborhood in the first place?
By the way, what's your angle on going after the manufacturer of a legal product than can only hurt someone when someone picks it and deliberately uses it in that way? Check in with places like Africa and Central America, where gangs there routinely kill people with machetes, knives, and bottles of gasoline. Do you think that people intent on that sort of terrorizing care, at all, what you think about their chosen tools? I can tell you one thing they do care about: not knowing which business or household may be able to defend itself. In states like Florida, the right to carry has reduced violent crime. In places like Australia, where they've confiscated everyone's guns, violent crime has gone up, as criminals can act with impunity. The exact opposite of what the gun control people wanted (no matter how many times they're told that's what's going to happen).
If guns in personal possesion are such a problem, how do places like Switzerland, where there are more guns per household than in the US manage to have less violent crime? Not by regulating hardware, but by improving software: they have a real educational system with actual standards, they don't tolerate crime, and their culture doesn't celebrate thuggishness as a fashion. And, of course, violent criminals there know that there is a strong possibility of getting shot down like a dog while being a violent criminal: that has a wonderful impact on career choice.
Hey, I'm relaxed. This whole thread is based on me cracking a joke! Of course it's based on my personal experience with posters here on their recurring theme of "you dumb/too-powerful/fascist/etc Americans," and certainly plenty of that has come along with comparisons to how NOT all of those things Canadians are. Same from Europe, of course... but the whole point of the post was to have a chuckle over the Canadian proposal to proctologically examine every packet that hits your web browser, even as we (in the States) get ribbed for things (sometimes by Canadians) that I consider way, way less intrusive.
As for my "delusional babble" about this sort of thing happening more easily in countries where participation in daily life by, regulation of more industries/behavior/trade/activities by, and public dependence upon government runs deeper and wider... there's nothing delusional about that. And in comparing the reach and regulatory breadth of Canadian government with the US, it's simply no surprise that legislators there would propose something like what's being discussed here. I'm not off base making that observation, and I'm not delusional for enjoying the irony (relative to the "you [insert Orwellian adjective] Americans" comments that do indeed flow from up north in a lot of comments/threads here on slashdot).
Um, I'm not sure what kind of logic they teach you down there, but even if this were to pass (highly unlikely), it won't make "the U.S." any less evil or Orwellian. It's not a relative thing.
Well, let's see. Speaking of who teaches who what, I'm wondering what you think we're actually called, that you feel the need to put "the U.S." in quotes. Odd. Maybe that's how you talk about us in "Canada."
My point, though, is that many Canadian posters here on slashdot like to use phrases like "you Americans," and imply some sort of sweeping societal failure south of the border, and some sort of prevailing ethical/governmental/cultural superiority north thereof. I really don't care whether this bit of silliness passes or not... the funny thing is that it's at least as draconian as anything that's been contemplated here, and seems to be born of a more paternalistic or nanny-state mentality that normally seems to be a point of pride, but which, when applied to network monitoring is suddenly shocking. But that's what socializing businesses and utilities does, so I'm finding it mildly amusing to have it seem so jarring to Canadian sensibilities to contemplate something that seems like such a natural outgrowth of the more socialist posture of your government. We're not talking about what impact it might have on US law enforcement's mission or legal options - we're talking about pot calling the kettle black.
whose geekier citizens take such glee, here on slashdot, in saying what an evil, Orwellian place the U.S. is? Surely not. Couldn't be. Nah.
Your responding to a joke with a serious answer
The post's joking tone was fairly obvious, but not to a lot of people, I think. My response was as much for the wider audience as it was for the poster who cracked the joke. I do get it, though!
...is that there isn't much need for Astronauts in our new service-based economy, so they're gonna have a hell of a time finding a new job
Well, then there hasn't been a need ever, if that's how you look at it. But try this instead: these are some of the smartest, most physically and intellectually hardy, well-rounded people on the planet. Every one of them is better equipped to teach than most teachers, better able to fly than most pilots, better able to handle stress than most soldiers/firefighters/police, better able to understand and work with complex systems than most engineers... somehow I think that someone with those skills is hardly going to be working at, well, Disney's Space Mountain ride. There are plenty of systems engineers I know making six figures that would love to have one of these folks as a boss. Just the aerospace defense area alone could gobble up the entire astronaut-trained team in any one month's hiring cycle.
Now... does holding analysis review meetings quite measure up to flying to the moon? No. Does grading orbital mechanics term papers have quite the same panache as shrieking into LEO with a billion dollar payload? No. Is my job boring? Most of the time. They'll deal with it just fine.
If they believed in WMDs, there was clearly a really strong case for holding off a few weeks. They could have had a report backing their case to bring the Europeans and perhaps the Russians on-side and at least persuade the Arab states to passively support the invasion. Remember, waiting for that report was the demand the French were explicitly making for support in the security council.
No so! The French explicitly said that there was no circumstance under which they would agree to the use of force against Saddam's regime, ever. They said that they would use their security council veto against any resolution, regardless, that expressly called for the forcible removal of that regime. Their decision did not hinge on the outcome of a report (which could never have been complete without the cooperation of Saddam's government, which was never going to happen). To the contrary: indications are that Saddam himself thought he had weapons that he didn't have. The French, and everyone else, thought so too. But there was too much money changing hands with Saddam for them to want to see him removed, and they said they'd oppose any use of force, ever, to remove him. It's not any more complicated than that, so why would anyone who considered Saddam a threat wait around for the French to say anything differently?
How is it politically incorrect to say that you eat what you shoot ? The very purpose of hunting is to get something to eat, isn't it ? And even if you just hunt for fun, it would be wastefull to leave the dead animals behind, wouldn't it?
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I like eating meat. I enjoy the act of hunting, and all of the tradition, dogs, equipment, and social conventions that surround it. I surely don't hunt for the sake of just killing critters (unless we're talking about, say, ground hogs that are destroying crops). I'm referring to political incorrectness in the sense that other people find these things to be offensive (like, eating meat at all, or hunting for it), and I like to poke fun at those people by not being shy about hunting.
The whole "meat is murder" crowd (many of which still seem to enjoy nice leather shoes) don't just have a bias - they're just rabidly against eating meat, and they're that much louder about people like me that are personally willing to actually kill the animals that we eat. I guess that's just too much reality for them or something. But to clarify: I take very seriously the act of hunting, and I strive to always make sure that bird, deer, or fish is killed as quickly and humanely as possible - and that I cook it as deliciously as possible, and with as many friends and as good a bottle of wine as possible. So: I don't find killing or eating meat incorrect in any way - but I like to bring it up sometimes because I know it makes the crazies, well, crazy.
Thanks for asking, as I prefer that over leaving you with the impression you've already formed (which seems to have been derived from, I don't know, episodes of The Dukes of Hazard or something).
I (and my wife) own (or are slaves to, dependin on how you look at it) two prize German Shorthaired Pointers. "Prize," in the sense that they are stellar bird dogs from champion lines, and are able to locate a hunkered down upland game bird (a quail, pheasant, partridge or other tasty favorite) in wet grass from 50 yards away. It's spectacular to watch them work a farmer's field or pasture. Their job is to show us where the birds are without spooking them off. We (my wife and I, or whomever is out with us), then poke around in the cover until the birds flush up. This happens very quickly, and you have to a very good shot to quickly dispatch the birds. When you miss, the look of reproachment from the dogs is, well, almost unbearable.
So, to avoid that bit of melodrama, and more importantly, to avoid having to go to the grocery store to buy wildy inferior, chemically-treated poultry for dinner, we go to the range. This means shooting a clay pigeons thrown by very expensive machinery, but it's good practice for fast birds.
The signature file also, of course, is a larger reminder simply to practice something to the point of being good at it before you start letting others depend on your performance. Plus, of course, the sheer political incorrectness of mentioning that I eat birds, which I shoot, and have dogs that help me do it, is no end of fun (despite the flames that sometimes get posted).
Please, and I mean this, ask any questions you might have!
I wonder if they found anything buried in its pocketses.
I'm amazed at the consistency with which the biggest whiners post anonymously. Slashdot never did a better thing than to mark such posters as cowards.
Regardless:
Did patents encourage the "invention" of UNIX, VMS, CP/M, QDOS, BEOS etc? NO!
You're missing the point (mostly, of my comments on the post to which I was replying, which was proposing collective/communal R&D funded by the public in lieu of private enterprise). Personal ambition to see a better solution (whether out of a Linus-Torvalds-style mission like Linux, or a traditional capitalist-style pursuit of designing and profiting from a better mousetrap). People who want something different or better, or believe that they can make a living by inventing and/or producing the same for others' use, are innovators. Some innovations are expensive to create - in terms of time, materials, people, etc, and it simply can't all be charity work. The need for better systems and software causes people to dream them up and produce them. They shouldn't be punished for doing so by watching someone else avoid all the costs and reap all the rewards.
Property can be stolen, somebody reusing an idea does not deprive the originator of that idea, it is not theft!
I imagine that you're listening to pirated music while you're typing, right? Semantics and hair splitting are the last resort of those that would make intellectual slaves out of creative people. Some innovations (highly complex drugs, for example) don't just pop out of someone's head. It takes millions, billions of dollars for some "ideas" to become viable. That has to be protected, or it just simply won't happen. Patents are the mechanism.
I'm a capitalist, cheap labor works for me
Again, you're missing the point. Cheap labor doesn't invent quantum computing interfaces or new anti-biotics.
These generally aren't the people who collect on their work, thanks to the multitude of pompous assholes that take all the credit for themselves.
Smart people don't work for people that won't reward them. Being "pompous" doesn't get you anything: writing checks does. If you are an innovator, and go to work (and take money from!) someone with whom you've reached some arrangement on patents or copyrights... what's to complain about? Or, are you talking about actual contract fraud? That's not in the scope of this thread, and is probably not what you mean.
No, that's called job satisfaction and individuals are free to seek employment elsewhere
Yeah, and your point is? If you want to work somewhere that owns your patents when you leave, then that's your decision. If you want to own your own patents, you work under different arrangements, which are available. That's not really a difficult concept.
[I'm betting you could hire a doctor and buy a defibulator for every plane a lot cheaper than dumping even ONE load of fuel like that per year.]
Pay up. 85% of the fuel on a 757 costs $16000. A defib is $3000, and a doctor is $152000/year (although a nurse or EMT is 1/4th of that, its still more expensive).
Ok, then I'll just stick with the A380 or a trans-Pacific 747-stretch. I'm sure you got my point (though I give you full credit for actually doing some math!). No good way to do math, though, on the dumping of fuel over farmland or water... there's just no nice way to handle that qualitative (rather than quantitative) problem. Other than... just don't do it. Apples and Oranges, though, up against someone about to have an M.I. five minutes out of the airport.
No, patents prevent competition.
If you mean that patents prevent your competitors from using your invention without having to bear the costs of inventing a competing technology themselves, then, yes. But company X making profit off of their own invention means that company Y will need to innovate and compete by arriving at a better way to solve the problem (and thus win back those customers). Patents encourage the creative innovation of competing (and superior) patentable products/concepts/practices.
Since the _only_ valid societal rationale for patents to exist is to promote the public good
Really? I would think that being able to benefit from your labor and creativity is a strong incentive. Strong enough that the person who does it best gets rewarded accordingly, and only indirectly (though substantially) does the public benefit. The public benefit is frosting on the cake. Protection of an individual's claim to their own work is the heart of it.
it would be a LOT more simple & straightforward to promote innovation if society collectively paid a lot of smart people to create useful ideas
Excellent idea, Citizen Comrade! Why, in countries where that's been the practice, we see fantastic displays of innovation in the areas of stealing IP and technologies from those private innovators elsewhere that are actually getting it done faster, better, and with better-paid people in a higher standard of living. I'm sure some of the community-based researchers in North Korea, or perhaps the ones that prospered so well in the Sovier Union, would disagree with me, me being a clueless Yankee and all.
The anti-competitive effect of patents just turns out to be prone to abuse
Though I'd say that the abuse of the best and brightest people in any collective setting is a much more pervasive problem. In any academic, or even private "team"-based setting where a group of people are tasked with a complex goal, some small percentage of brighter bulbs will always be the people doing the heavy lifting and the creative thinking that actually moves the project forward. The only way not to burn people like that out is a merit-based system that rewards and encourages going the extra mile on (say) research and development. Your system would work fine, as long as the minority of the research communinity that actually innovates gets some sort of reward (and knows they will be getting some sort of reward) for their unique innovations. Oh, wait, that's called a patent and the right to use it.
The only time I have heard of anyone dumping their fuel on purpose is when they were about to make an emergency/crash landing (without landing gear cause it was stuck, or because of some other problem
Just a few years back I was flying out of O'Hare, and a the 757 I was on dumped (according to the pilot) about 85% of its fuel (and we were headed to San Fransisco, so even if they didn't have it completely filled up, you know it was a whole lotta fuel) because: one of the passengers was having some chest pain. They dumped over the Great Plains, turned around, and landed back at O'Hare, by which time the passenger said he was feeling much better, thank you anyway.
I'm betting you could hire a doctor and buy a defibulator for every plane a lot cheaper than dumping even ONE load of fuel like that per year. Never mind the corn field it probably all landed on.
Though I don't doubt that there is some profit motive, the market for this can't be the only motivator.
No, it's not about the market for the type of aircraft that he's actually flying on this trip - but of course it's about showcasing his team's technical skills and creativity. It's marketing, and it's all about keeping the name in the press. Certainly there's proof of concept and lots to learn, but he's got a lot of other irons in the fire, too. It's a lot like when a major movie studio makes an Oscar-winning "art" film that absolutely loses money directly, but which serves the companies larger efforts and bottom line because of credibility.
How does it feel to be winning abroad but losing at home?
Hmmm. Can't imagine what you mean. Losing to whom, by what standard?
And you, being the enlightened American, are not embarrassed by the firebombing of innocent civilians in Tokyo or the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Actually, no, I'm not. Because we didn't start the conflict, and because even as they knew their abject aggression throughout the Pacific was a lost cause, the Japanese refused to cease hostilities. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put a stop to the war, and saved both the allies and the Japanese from the bloody grind of an invasion. Why would we be embarrassed about ending a war that the Japanese started by raiding througout the Pacific, enslaving people in Korea, China, and throughout the South Pacific, and then (just to make sure that we might not get in the way), attacking the US Navy in Hawaii?
Japanese are there to rebuild the bridges and roads
Right. And they are armed and trained to shoot to defend themselves, and coordinate with other forces to call in air strikes or whatever else they need to suppress the insurgents that seek to deprive the Iraqi people of things like their bridges, their police, and their vote. And their mission there is to help stabilize a place that Saddam completely sacrificed to his own military and political ambitions. Remember how he started a war with Iran (over a million dead), or invaded Kuwait? Or, even after being kicked out of Kuwait, agreed to sell his oil to the world in exchange for things like food... but then turned those sales instead into military hardware, palaces, and tangible financial support for nice folks like Hamas, Hezbollah... you get the idea.
Hmm, we agree on something
If, by that clumsy bit of sarcasm, you're implying that the US is some sort of imperial force, why not ask the very same Japanese you're talking about, and ask how imperial we've been there? Or in Germany? Or in Kuwait? Or Croatia? Honestly, sometimes it would be easier if our purposes were as evil as you'd like to pretend they were. But no, we get to do the dirty work, and most of the rest of the world just gets to complain about not getting enough opportunities to tell us how to put our resources, people, and productivity to work on other people's behalf.
Ask the people in Iraq how they felt leaving the voting polls last month, or ask the people in Lebanon where they got the inspiration to finally speak up and stop being puppets to Syria... it's the actions we've taken in Iraq that have changed the direction in that part of the world. Please note that Lybia gave up their nuke ambitions, and are going to find their way back into the legitimate world - and not a shot fired or a US soldier on the ground. Why? Because we did indeed act in the name of freedom. That you feel the need to put quotes around that word says a lot about you.
Talk about redefinition of language. What did Iraq ever do to Japan that could possibly provoke them to send troops in "self defence".
Wrong question. You should be asking what Saddam Hussein and his regime was doing to the stability of one of the most volatile regions in the world, and how that would impact countries like Japan, that have a vested interest in keeping that kind of mayhem at bay. The indirect impact of guys like Saddam are very, very familiar to the Japanese (they're still living down their reputation around the Pacific rim for being pretty much the same way 60 years ago).
It is self defense when you remove tyrants like that. Japan, and the rest of the world, will face less grief from here on out because of what's happening there now. Ask the folks in Lebanon (read the news today?) or the folks who just voted in Iraq (remember) if the long-term safety of the free world is helped or hindered by the peacekeepers working in Iraq, Japanese troops included.
To the extent that democratic, free people anywhere are expressly threatened by the acts of extremists in a multi-country, oil-fueled, arms-laden, hatred-powered region, it's self defense to pitch in and help deal with it.
can't speak to the embarassment part, but until our fearless leader convinced them to send troops to Iraq postwar Japan was content to be a very pacifist nation with a self-defense military
The Japanese forces in Iraq are there in a self-defense capacity. Making the world a more peaceful place, and less of a haven for murderous tyrants is self defense. For all of us.
If Japan has "pacifist" sensibilities, it is only in their over-reaction to having started a war. Deeper, more culturally, they are not a people to tolerate threats, and certainly they have the sensibility to know that keeping the peace can mean going out and doing something about those that would violate the peace. There's nothing "turn the other cheek" about the way that Japanese law enforcement deals with threatening people, and there's nothing philosophically different between that and stepping out with other countries to reduce larger threats.
Sigh. OK, he said:
I can easily imagine that Japan may be able to seriously leverage the commercial use of space the way the current corrupt leadership in the US cannot. What mean if the Japanese seriously started space based businesses while the US did not?
What country has even come close to what the U.S. has done to further the world's commercial use of space? Our telecommunications pioneering alone lead the world into a new age. Of course Europe (and to a certain extent now, Asia) are catching up. But as country with an industrial focus in this area, it's no contest. Is the US focus in space spread around too awkwardly of late? Yes. I'm glad to see Bush's recent directives to NASA to focus some more riveting projects. Can't wait for more of the same.
Now, will Europe use an arrangement not unlike Airbus to actually get those governments directly into the business? Will the Japanese government become a bigger part of their country's corporate space business? Probably.
But: is some "corruption" (as the twit poster put it) keeping the US out of a healthy commercial role in space? Please. And, to your point: I didn't "refute" the post because it was so non-specific (non-meaningful, really) that there's nothing but anti-Americanism to refute. As nothing more than a cranky-sounding excuse to say that America is corrupt, I called that troll a troll.
As an American, all I have to say is, "leave it to the Japanese to take massive steps towards furthering the human race while the rest of us are stuck here fighting amongst ourselves."
Please be sure to pass that along to the Japanese troops that are in Iraq right now. Because they, like us, know that things like space exploration, and liberating places like Iraq from corrupt regimes are not mutually exclusive. Read the damn news, why don't you? The Japanese are still embarassed by the last war they started, but they understand the need to get involved the "fighting amongst ourselves" so that it can be stopped. Doing so, just as ending the Soviet rule of Eastern Europe, brings huge peace dividends: which we can spend in space (I hope!). Less turmoil, and fewer crazy tyrants with pet oilfields in the world is crucial if we want to really focus on things like space. But we can work on both at the same time.
current corrupt leadership in the US
somebody please just mod this idiot out of his misery