Hm, in hindsight, I have to agree, I was a bit too melodramatic. So I'll respond here in my normal, sober, cynical voice:
As far as the uselessness of anniversaries, I'd agree, in most cases. The 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor is a meaningless event and probably doesn't deserve celebration. But my point was, given the tendency to celebrate meaningless anniversaries, what do we gather from the fact that the moon landing - certainly a landmark event in human history - doesn't get any notice? I'd say this is more than an indication the space program has dropped out of public interest.
As to CNN airing shuttle launches, that's a load of crap - the fact that they do doesn't indicate at all that there's public interest in space. And my point is -precisely- that there's only scientific interest these days. There's no longer the romanticism there was when Kennedy was around.
The fact that you remember the moon landing? Irrelevant. I don't mean LITERALLY remember - i mean spce no longer figures in the public consciousness. They don't care about it. It's like the Carter Presidency: sure, you remember what it was like, but you don't really care about it anymore.
And no, you dweeb, I don't mean a suggestion box. I mean an actual lobbying force. Everyone else has a congressional lobby - Christian fundamentalists, gun manufacturers, orange farmers, you name it. Why not geeks? I'd consider their viewpoints for the most part far more rational than others, and certainly a lot of what they feel doesn't get represented adequately. It's easy enough to naysay it into nothingness, but i'd consider this sort of pessimism extremely misplaced. If you try it and it succeeds, you have a powerful tool to project your viewpoint. If it fails, you have some congressional mailboxes filled with spam. Which might succeed in getting that anti-spam legislation through. We can't lose.
It's only been 30 years since the moon landing. And yet we've already forgotten about it - the thirtieth anniversary passed by mostly uncelebrated. I don't recall a single mention of it in the press other than a fleeting mention on NPR. Why is space no longer interesting to anyone? There was a time, not long back, when people looked up at the stars and were consumed with the desire to explore and know what was out there - or so I like to think. Is what drove the space race of the sixties only the paranoia and jingoism of the cold war? Was there no trace of nobility, no desire to explore the unexplored? No burning curiousity? Things like Star Trek and the host of other popular space-opera shows around that time make me believe otherwise - people genuinely WERE captivated by space, and by the thought that man might, one day, pierce that star-studded blackness and live amongst comets and asteroids and pulsars and black holes and other galactic marvels. Where did that die? Why is the current generation so apathetic about space? Is it just that it's 'unimportant', that we find it non-critical and would rather devote interest to more important investments, like national security? Was the only reason NASA got any funding was that it furthered the development of ICBMs, or was it because the people had a genuine interest in it then and don't any longer? Finally, what can we do to rekindle interest in space? Are we reduced to just crowing about the latest NASA victories on/. and lamenting the fact that they don't get any funding? I'd like to think there's something more we geeks can do of substance. I propose a 'NASA box' that helps/.'ers send comments to Congressional individuals encouraging to direct funding to NASA. If we can't bring it to other people, at least the (potentially powerful) Geek Lobby can do something. SA
Actually, the opposite is true. The genetic causes of many diseases are well-understood, but therapy is difficult. For example, it's well-understood how diabetes works - and has been for decades. But curing diabetes has proven impossible so far, because you can't do 'gene therapy' - restore gene copy in an entire tissue/organ. Regrowing organs externally alleviates this difficulty, since you don't have to worry about good delivery vectors or efficient transfection of your adenovirus or any other such bullshit - you just fix a few cells, grow the organ, and swap it in. Organ growth is the elixir of life. It WILL change the world - heart too old? grow a new one with long telomeres. Cancerous lung? Grow a new lung from a healthy lung cell and take the old one out completely. Immortality is just down the road. SA
I fail to understand how these machines can continue to lack any sort of removable media without Apple pushing any new alternatives. I would appreciate the idea of iMacs as 'network machines' much more if they were actually efficient at it. I'm just totally flabbergasted that they continue this policy when it doesn't have any clear benefit...
Once long ago I read in Scientific American about people who were working on laser-controlled read/write 3D arrays which stored data using a photochemical called rhodopsin. Anyone know if this thing was shelved or in the works or what?
Slashdot Mirror
Hm, in hindsight, I have to agree, I was a bit too melodramatic. So I'll respond here in my normal, sober, cynical voice:
As far as the uselessness of anniversaries, I'd agree, in most cases. The 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor is a meaningless event and probably doesn't deserve celebration. But my point was, given the tendency to celebrate meaningless anniversaries, what do we gather from the fact that the moon landing - certainly a landmark event in human history - doesn't get any notice? I'd say this is more than an indication the space program has dropped out of public interest.
As to CNN airing shuttle launches, that's a load of crap - the fact that they do doesn't indicate at all that there's public interest in space. And my point is -precisely- that there's only scientific interest these days. There's no longer the romanticism there was when Kennedy was around.
The fact that you remember the moon landing? Irrelevant. I don't mean LITERALLY remember - i mean spce no longer figures in the public consciousness. They don't care about it. It's like the Carter Presidency: sure, you remember what it was like, but you don't really care about it anymore.
And no, you dweeb, I don't mean a suggestion box. I mean an actual lobbying force. Everyone else has a congressional lobby - Christian fundamentalists, gun manufacturers, orange farmers, you name it. Why not geeks? I'd consider their viewpoints for the most part far more rational than others, and certainly a lot of what they feel doesn't get represented adequately. It's easy enough to naysay it into nothingness, but i'd consider this sort of pessimism extremely misplaced. If you try it and it succeeds, you have a powerful tool to project your viewpoint. If it fails, you have some congressional mailboxes filled with spam. Which might succeed in getting that anti-spam legislation through. We can't lose.
SA
It's only been 30 years since the moon landing. And yet we've already forgotten about it - the thirtieth anniversary passed by mostly uncelebrated. I don't recall a single mention of it in the press other than a fleeting mention on NPR. Why is space no longer interesting to anyone? There was a time, not long back, when people looked up at the stars and were consumed with the desire to explore and know what was out there - or so I like to think. Is what drove the space race of the sixties only the paranoia and jingoism of the cold war? Was there no trace of nobility, no desire to explore the unexplored? No burning curiousity? Things like Star Trek and the host of other popular space-opera shows around that time make me believe otherwise - people genuinely WERE captivated by space, and by the thought that man might, one day, pierce that star-studded blackness and live amongst comets and asteroids and pulsars and black holes and other galactic marvels. Where did that die? Why is the current generation so apathetic about space? Is it just that it's 'unimportant', that we find it non-critical and would rather devote interest to more important investments, like national security? Was the only reason NASA got any funding was that it furthered the development of ICBMs, or was it because the people had a genuine interest in it then and don't any longer? Finally, what can we do to rekindle interest in space? Are we reduced to just crowing about the latest NASA victories on /. and lamenting the fact that they don't get any funding? I'd like to think there's something more we geeks can do of substance. I propose a 'NASA box' that helps /.'ers send comments to Congressional individuals encouraging to direct funding to NASA. If we can't bring it to other people, at least the (potentially powerful) Geek Lobby can do something. SA
Actually, the opposite is true. The genetic causes of many diseases are well-understood, but therapy is difficult. For example, it's well-understood how diabetes works - and has been for decades. But curing diabetes has proven impossible so far, because you can't do 'gene therapy' - restore gene copy in an entire tissue/organ. Regrowing organs externally alleviates this difficulty, since you don't have to worry about good delivery vectors or efficient transfection of your adenovirus or any other such bullshit - you just fix a few cells, grow the organ, and swap it in. Organ growth is the elixir of life. It WILL change the world - heart too old? grow a new one with long telomeres. Cancerous lung? Grow a new lung from a healthy lung cell and take the old one out completely. Immortality is just down the road. SA
I fail to understand how these machines can continue to lack any sort of removable media without Apple pushing any new alternatives. I would appreciate the idea of iMacs as 'network machines' much more if they were actually efficient at it. I'm just totally flabbergasted that they continue this policy when it doesn't have any clear benefit...
Once long ago I read in Scientific American about people who were working on laser-controlled read/write 3D arrays which stored data using a photochemical called rhodopsin. Anyone know if this thing was shelved or in the works or what?