There is hardly anything man can do to seriously damage this planet. Honestly, there isn't. We can do unpleasant things to our environment and we can make the planet uncomfortable for a little while. If we go insane and blast off all of our nuclear weapons some day we can do a decent bit of damage, but nothing like what nature has in store for us. In fact, let's assume someone could detonate all the nuclear weapons on earth at the same time, it would be like a firecracker compared to the K-T Extinction Impact. Since nuclear weapons would be detonated in an all-out war, it is unlikely that more than half would actually explode (the rest being rendered useless by actions of war). Detonating all nuclear weapons would come nowhere near what the K-T Extinction Impact was, and that isn't even that big of an explosion in nature.
Don't believe the 1950s propaganda. An all-out nuclear war will not kill everybody on the planet, probably not even half of the humans on it. It will not cause decades or centuries of unlivable conditions on the earth. Human kind would recover at a reasonable rate and probably thrive in a moderate amount of time. Some places would probably not be seriously affected at all.
Here is a funny factoid to think about - Hiroshima took a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. How long did it take before it was perfectly save to live in Hiroshima after the nuke hit? Answer: a couple of months. It was reasonably safe in the days after the explosion. No serious radiation damage was done to humans in the days and weeks following the explosion. Fetuses in the womb of their mothers during the explosion were adversely affected by radiation, but few or no noticeable radiation damages are known from babies conceived in the time after the bomb dropped.
If you want to imagine a big explosion, think of a Gamma Ray burst in our neighborhood. A decent sized star would release many times more energy in less than a second than our sun will release in its entire lifetime of about 10 billion years.
Compared to "mother nature" the most insane murderous human being ever lived was positively a nice guy/gal.
good old mother nature has been handing out mass extinctions like candy throughout the history of the planet without any help from people at all
This is one of the things I don't get with the enviro-nutters and Gaia lovers. They act as if mother nature is a nice old lady that only wants us, and our co-passengers on this space ship, to have a nice time of it. Even looking at Mother Earth (Gaia) on "her" own, describing her as benevolent is wildly inaccurate. A homicidal maniac is more like it. Super volcanoes, virus outbreaks and all of that stuff is all Gaia, and it's all designed to kill as many of us (and our co-passengers) as possible. We live on this planet, not because the good nature of Gaia but in spite of her homicidal nature.
Now add "the rest of the Universe" to "mother nature" and things go from bad to terrifying. Again, I've heard nutters both on the Gaia and the Jesus side of the fence extol the virtues of our universe and how it is specially designed to support us and our happy lives. Balderdash. Gaia and The Universe is spending an enormous amount of energy, inventiveness and "hatred" in trying to kill us all, while we fight them the best we can. Sadly, in the end, we'll lose no mater what we do. In the grand scheme of things "in the end" is not too far away. Looking forward to a gamma ray burst in our neighborhood one of these days? It'll make for one hell of a sun tan.
Spacefaring ought to be postponed to the 22th century or late 21st
Seriously?
We have more pressing things right now
The dinosaurs thought so too.
The cost of preventing a seriously negative event with an asteroid is negligible. In fact, in the US, people spend more than 20 times the amount needed to save us from a city killer on Starbucks Coffee alone. Basically the B612 foundation is asking us to drop one cup of Starbucks every other week to prevent a city killer from killing a few million of us. Not doing so is moronic.
The most important of all sciences at the moment is getting humans into space. As many as possible, as safely as needed (which is a lot less safe than we are doing now) and as far as possible.
We have observed that there appears to be about 1,000 rocks to 1,000,000,000 grains of sand. Everywhere we look that appears to be the ratio. We thought there was 1,000,000,000 grains of sand on the beach, but we were mistaken, there was in fact 10,000,000,000, there was lots of beach we hadn't seen. If the grain of sand to rock theory is correct, then there is in fact 10,000 rocks, 9,000 of them on these stretches of beach that we had missed.
Didn't your mother tell you that you should not switch off the computer while it was updating? It's not the fault of Microsoft that you turned off your computer, returned 42 minutes later and expected it to be upgraded.
For the record, having open standard document formats makes a lot of sense, so my comment was not a negative reaction to the original article, only to the retarded ramblings of of the idiot to which I replied.
Its people being forced to upgrade thier older perfectly functional versions of office to read documents being created by people who have upgraded
Are you stupid? Seriously? What applications do not change the file format of their native files as you upgrade the application? I do not know of any I use.
Why not? If the area is being monitored so that there is no risk of conflict, then there is no opportunity for somebody to be harmed
And there was monitoring going on in this case? Hardly. Also, safe monitoring assumes fault-free humans, hardly probable. I'd say we'd be just a little safer if we ban the flying of model aircraft in the area of an airport, or helipad.
So, if a dude flies his model airplane for profit over an airport runway, it is only FAA business if a plane is trying to take off or land at the time? Sure.
So your comment "That doesn't apply to stuff near the earth" was not really all that smart then? Particularly considering your comment "because collision is a very real threat ".
There is no controversy to teach. If there was, schools should teach it. So far though, only one theory has ever been proposed, so schools have to teach that. If another one ever comes along, of course they should teach that too.
Teaching kids nonsense like this is detrimental to their development in many areas. Sadly, when US parents murder their children for religious reasons, the courts have basically said: "shame on you, try not to kill them the next time". When they do kill them the next time the courts have again said: "Shucks, that wasn't nice of you. Give us your wrist so we can slap it, and don't do it again".
Religious fruit-cakes in the US have far too much liberty in abusing their children. Bastardizing their education should not be one of them, neither should killing them, but apparently that is almost OK.
Slashdot Mirror
..glowing embers ... brought about by similar egos
There is hardly anything man can do to seriously damage this planet. Honestly, there isn't. We can do unpleasant things to our environment and we can make the planet uncomfortable for a little while. If we go insane and blast off all of our nuclear weapons some day we can do a decent bit of damage, but nothing like what nature has in store for us. In fact, let's assume someone could detonate all the nuclear weapons on earth at the same time, it would be like a firecracker compared to the K-T Extinction Impact. Since nuclear weapons would be detonated in an all-out war, it is unlikely that more than half would actually explode (the rest being rendered useless by actions of war). Detonating all nuclear weapons would come nowhere near what the K-T Extinction Impact was, and that isn't even that big of an explosion in nature.
Don't believe the 1950s propaganda. An all-out nuclear war will not kill everybody on the planet, probably not even half of the humans on it. It will not cause decades or centuries of unlivable conditions on the earth. Human kind would recover at a reasonable rate and probably thrive in a moderate amount of time. Some places would probably not be seriously affected at all.
Here is a funny factoid to think about - Hiroshima took a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. How long did it take before it was perfectly save to live in Hiroshima after the nuke hit? Answer: a couple of months. It was reasonably safe in the days after the explosion. No serious radiation damage was done to humans in the days and weeks following the explosion. Fetuses in the womb of their mothers during the explosion were adversely affected by radiation, but few or no noticeable radiation damages are known from babies conceived in the time after the bomb dropped.
If you want to imagine a big explosion, think of a Gamma Ray burst in our neighborhood. A decent sized star would release many times more energy in less than a second than our sun will release in its entire lifetime of about 10 billion years.
Compared to "mother nature" the most insane murderous human being ever lived was positively a nice guy/gal.
Moron.
good old mother nature has been handing out mass extinctions like candy throughout the history of the planet without any help from people at all
This is one of the things I don't get with the enviro-nutters and Gaia lovers. They act as if mother nature is a nice old lady that only wants us, and our co-passengers on this space ship, to have a nice time of it. Even looking at Mother Earth (Gaia) on "her" own, describing her as benevolent is wildly inaccurate. A homicidal maniac is more like it. Super volcanoes, virus outbreaks and all of that stuff is all Gaia, and it's all designed to kill as many of us (and our co-passengers) as possible. We live on this planet, not because the good nature of Gaia but in spite of her homicidal nature.
Now add "the rest of the Universe" to "mother nature" and things go from bad to terrifying. Again, I've heard nutters both on the Gaia and the Jesus side of the fence extol the virtues of our universe and how it is specially designed to support us and our happy lives. Balderdash. Gaia and The Universe is spending an enormous amount of energy, inventiveness and "hatred" in trying to kill us all, while we fight them the best we can. Sadly, in the end, we'll lose no mater what we do. In the grand scheme of things "in the end" is not too far away. Looking forward to a gamma ray burst in our neighborhood one of these days? It'll make for one hell of a sun tan.
Spacefaring ought to be postponed to the 22th century or late 21st
Seriously?
We have more pressing things right now
The dinosaurs thought so too.
The cost of preventing a seriously negative event with an asteroid is negligible. In fact, in the US, people spend more than 20 times the amount needed to save us from a city killer on Starbucks Coffee alone. Basically the B612 foundation is asking us to drop one cup of Starbucks every other week to prevent a city killer from killing a few million of us. Not doing so is moronic.
The most important of all sciences at the moment is getting humans into space. As many as possible, as safely as needed (which is a lot less safe than we are doing now) and as far as possible.
Are you retarded?
you don't want one falling on your city, but it isn't going to kill millions more with deadly radiation after the impact either
Neither is a nuclear bomb.
Its the aftermath of the A-bomb that was so gruesome
No, it wasn't.
We have observed that there appears to be about 1,000 rocks to 1,000,000,000 grains of sand. Everywhere we look that appears to be the ratio. We thought there was 1,000,000,000 grains of sand on the beach, but we were mistaken, there was in fact 10,000,000,000, there was lots of beach we hadn't seen. If the grain of sand to rock theory is correct, then there is in fact 10,000 rocks, 9,000 of them on these stretches of beach that we had missed.
Moron.
Or how about a "for profit" prison?
And suddenly half of the worlds geeks go and murder someone to get to the moon. Sounds like a great idea.
This is a good analysis of NASA. It's a good oldie, but it should be read more often.
So a vaccine that failed the test stops being a vaccine
Yes. Next question.
No, but your knowledge of vaccinations is almost as bad as your knowledge of homeopathy.
Didn't your mother tell you that you should not switch off the computer while it was updating? It's not the fault of Microsoft that you turned off your computer, returned 42 minutes later and expected it to be upgraded.
For the record, having open standard document formats makes a lot of sense, so my comment was not a negative reaction to the original article, only to the retarded ramblings of of the idiot to which I replied.
Its people being forced to upgrade thier older perfectly functional versions of office to read documents being created by people who have upgraded
Are you stupid? Seriously? What applications do not change the file format of their native files as you upgrade the application? I do not know of any I use.
Title says enough
Goodness. It's worse than Microsoft Bob.
Why not? If the area is being monitored so that there is no risk of conflict, then there is no opportunity for somebody to be harmed
And there was monitoring going on in this case? Hardly. Also, safe monitoring assumes fault-free humans, hardly probable. I'd say we'd be just a little safer if we ban the flying of model aircraft in the area of an airport, or helipad.
So, if a dude flies his model airplane for profit over an airport runway, it is only FAA business if a plane is trying to take off or land at the time? Sure.
So your comment "That doesn't apply to stuff near the earth" was not really all that smart then? Particularly considering your comment "because collision is a very real threat ".
>> Which one is correct? Teach the controversy!
There is no controversy to teach. If there was, schools should teach it. So far though, only one theory has ever been proposed, so schools have to teach that. If another one ever comes along, of course they should teach that too.
Teaching kids nonsense like this is detrimental to their development in many areas. Sadly, when US parents murder their children for religious reasons, the courts have basically said: "shame on you, try not to kill them the next time". When they do kill them the next time the courts have again said: "Shucks, that wasn't nice of you. Give us your wrist so we can slap it, and don't do it again".
Religious fruit-cakes in the US have far too much liberty in abusing their children. Bastardizing their education should not be one of them, neither should killing them, but apparently that is almost OK.
Are you familiar with the term "helipad", do you see it anywhere in the documentation?
Free is not the same as unregulated. A market can be both free and regulated.
Betteridge says so.