I've never lived together with a bunch of vegan hippies, let alone in a closed ecosystem, so possibly I'm talking nonsense here
Actually, I think it would be a nightmare, not for vegan part, but for the hippie part. Basically, if you have people who are calm and vegan because they believe it is a healthier lifestyle, then that is one thing. But if you have people who are vegans (or anything else for that matter) because of some GRAND DRAMATIC REASON!, then life on board will be a living hell. I think the best thing to do is carefully vet for people who are balanced and very much the "live and let live" type. The problem with this is that most people who are getting into NASA (generally, I don't mean just astronauts) now are the overly-competitive types, and some that I knew in college who went onto NASA can be so damned whiny and obnoxious when they don't get their way. I've noticed the same thing with a lot of the younger, successful physicists. Probably has something to do with the level of competition involved.
Forgive me for confusing my smelly third world countries. Touche.
Let me guess. You are an American and a Republican - one of those people who are proud of not even having a passport or leaving their own little part of the world. Plus, at the rate Bushco is raiding the treasury and letting every bit of national infrastructure collapse, America will be a third world country pretty soon.
You should try going to Surabaya (oh, that's right, you don't want to be around "those" people). There is a better train system and a *much* better road system there and in much of the reasonably populated areas of Indonesia than there is in the US. You can actually drive on the roads there. In the US, even in the big cities, you are usually dodging craters to get anywhere. So, enjoy your "USA! USA! WE #1 W00T! W00T!" while you can. Idiots like you are fast making it an unlivable shithole.
Now if they could just come up with cameras that read your thoughts and react before you even finished the thought, the war on terror could finally be won!
And when they implement this in America, a bunch of stupid numbskulls will be repeating ad naseum "But, the Constitution doesn't say anything about the government being forbidden to read minds! Besides, if you aren't going to do anything wrong, what thoughts do you need to hide!"
Just let them try to sue me for royalties on music that I wrote/recorded/produced.
You seem to be under the impression that the RIAA has any shame whatsoever. These people are reptiles! I mean, they insist on deposing 10 year-old girls face-to-face. They file tons of "John Doe" suits and go after people who don't even own computers. And you think they will shy away from this just because it is your music?
Sounds like your 2 year old is not very advanced. By the time each of my kids reached two, they were already building and disassembling duplos (Bigger toddler Legos).
Oh yeah? Well my daughter was already designing her own warp drive by the time she was 2 years old. Hopefully, she will have it done by her 4th birthday.
It gets cancelled every few weeks, and you have to start a letter writing campaign to save it.
I would love to see the look on Paramount executives' faces when they notice the "Save Star Trek" bumper stickers someone put on their cars. Or, do we still have to do it to NBC executives just for old times sake? I would only be afraid that Rick Berman would use it as an excuse to make yet another Star Trek series.
Measurable how? What in the world makes you think your apparent measurements show you anything about reality? Because you have grown up with that as an universally accepted idea?
So, you don't believe your car's speedometer when it tells you your speed relative to the road? It would seem here that you are not only denying evolutionary theory, but all scientific knowledge as well. Or perhaps you don't believe in reality?
Power rangers have been seen with special equipment, also. Ooh, but your special equipment is sciency and at MIT. And maybe you understand how it works based on what other people have told other people have told other people (ad nauseam) have told you.
That has got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever read on slashdot. I understand how it works not just because someone told me, but because I have used optical measuring equipment and understand the principles involved in measuring extremely small objects like atoms (I do have a degree in physics and a doctorate in electrical engineering). If you don't believe laser measuring equipment works as it does, then you must not believe that modern technology even exists!
That there is a broken analogy. Science (working towards greater understanding) is very different from home repair (working towards a solution to a problem).
My rather obvious point was that science does not require a belief. Science only requires practice, study and observation (well, and tons of coffee, but I digress).
I know what it is. You don't seem to.
Ha! You remind me of one of my students (back when I taught). Upon failing his exam and not understanding in the least why he got anything wrong, he boldly declared to me "I know physics!" He didn't and he didn't do very well.
If the real world was anything like public school, we'd all be in trouble.
Here! Here! Public schools in the States are more like prisons than anything else. Also, one advantage of homeschooling (at least for the non-fundie homeschooled) is that the homeschooled children tend to be *more* sociable since they do not feel restricted to interacting only with children who are within a year of age difference.
instead of a metaphorical work constructed by comittee from parchments written (in some cases) hundreds of years after a man called jesus christ lived.
Not to quibble too much, but the books of the old testament were compiled about 5 to 6 centuries before Christ and the books of the New Testament, while not *compiled* until around the fifth century (the Council of Nicea (sp?) to be exact), they were written not long after the death of Christ. Well, except maybe for the Gospel of Luke, but that is because Luke's Gospel was the result of research and not a contemporaneous accout, a fact which the beginning of the Gospel of Luke states.
Doesn't that apply just as much to science, especially established scientific theories?
The scientific method produces measurable, testable results. And yes, atoms have been seen using special equipment see this for example. Conflating belief in religion and "belief" in science is like conflating belief in religion and "belief" in proper methods of home repair. I'm a religious man myself (though certainly no fundie), but your ignorance of what science is is appalling.
Most of them just use the tactic of saying things longer and louder than everyone else in the room and eventually people will believe you.
In America this has worked.
Well, I hate to say this, but shouting things again and again is what passes for debate in the States. People who try to explain things in a detailed and/or subtle way usually have people going "Boring!" or saying that you don't have strong beliefs.
You think journalists were ignorantly reporting "global cooling" in the '60s, but you think their alarmist reporting of "global warming" is fully vetted and well balanced? BTW, I'm sorry, I haven't listened to Rush Limbaugh in more than a year so I don't know my proper talking points to respond to you properly.
The point is that you are relying upon and responding to journalists, not scientists. It is the scientific community that are expressing great concerns about global warming. While journalists are reporting on it, their particular writings are largely irrellevant. Again, you have been responding to ignorant journalists instead of addressing the actual scientific work that has been performed with regard to global warming. And, the reason I mentioned Rush Limbaugh is that most people who deny global warming use the same tired talking points, which are the ones Limbaugh and other scientifically-ignorant
people use when they deny global warming based solely upon their ideologies.
Most people who believe in intelligent design do NOT believe that the world is only 6,000 years old. ID is *NOT* the same thing as creationism.
Um, actually, the people who devised the whole ID nonsense are the same people (like Hovind, and so on) who were earlier trying to force public schools to teach Young Earth Creationism. So, ID as it is actually practiced is nothing more than Young Earth Creationism. Now, the idea that the universe may be designed to a particular degree by an unknown intelligence (which is what ID purports to be) is vastly different from YEC, but in practice YEC is all it really is. I wouldn't mind a discussion of the idea that the universe shows something other than the result of natural processes, but right now this is not a scientific proposition. It is a philosophical one, and thus does not belong among scientific literature. You can believe anything from the comic book conception of an great bearded man in a robe creating the universe, to the universe being formed due to the action of karma and the great bearded man only *thinking* he created the universe, to even believing that special wave functions were set up by the inhabitants of the universe in the last big-bang-big-crunch cycle that increased the likelihood of intelligent life emerging (such as in Stanislaw Lem's "His Master's Voice"). None of these, however, belongs in an actual scientific discussion since there is no way presently of actually *testing* and *verifying* any of these ideas to any reasonable level of accuracy.
The idea of global cooling happened during a time of slight general cooling (from 1940 - 1970). It's no accident that the models of the time just so happened to fit expectations (the weather outside).
Actually, the question at the time was one of will the increase in carbon dioxide and other emissions create global warming or global cooling? Since atmospheric science was somewhat young in this regard, a lot of study was needed to determine what the long-term effects would be. It was a bunch of ignorant journalists who ran with the idea of global cooling, not actual scientists. Carl Sagan, among many others, was discussing global warming as early as the sixties using what was discovered about the atmosphere of Venus as an analogy to explain the concept to laymen. I have books copyrighted in the mid-1960's that discuss the possibilty of future global warming and its effects on the Earth's environment.
Try learning actual science for a change instead of mindlessly quoting ignorant bufoons like Rush Limbaugh. Sorry, but given a choice between (1) a great body of scientific work and research, along with the overwhealming scientific consensus, and (2) a guy who can't even get through his first year of college and has spent the last 20-30 years sitting on his butt behind a microphone blathering ideology out his cakehole, I think even someone as clearly ignorant as you are could see why I would choose option 1 (well, that and personally having a good understanding of actual physics).
The problem isn't that Republicans are at war with science, or the Democrats. The problem is that we have put politicians in charge of science!
While that is true to an extent, Republicans have been taking their war with science to ridiculous lengths since W was selected. This is only one of many times in which the head of the department/ agency/ whatever turns out to be an English/ Journalism/ Underwater-Basketweaving major who goes on to censor and alter what PhD scientists write about what they have studied and researched.
But you are certainly right, though. Having a bunch of scientifically-uneducated lawyers (which most Congresscritters are) set science policy is, shall we say, not exactly the best of ideas. I think this whole attitude goes back to the ancient stupidity which basically said that the king knows all.
Global warming is based on measured results and well understood scientific principles. The study of global warming has been a careful, ongoing scientific concern for over forty years. ID is just repackaged Young Earth Creationism from people who are stupid enough to believe that the world is only 6000 years old. Even St. Augustine (circa 5th century) advised people not to take the Genesis account as literal history since it was never meant to be that way.
After "Bicentennial Man" (*shudder*), I had hoped that the Good Doctor's work would not be further reduced to trash by Hollywood... but I was wrong. I'll have no part of "I, Robot", the Holly-weird version.
True, but neither of these is nearly as bad as thisversion of Isaac Asimov's Nightfall. This is a movie that would make Ed Wood blush with shame!
Slashdot Mirror
You should try going to Surabaya (oh, that's right, you don't want to be around "those" people). There is a better train system and a *much* better road system there and in much of the reasonably populated areas of Indonesia than there is in the US. You can actually drive on the roads there. In the US, even in the big cities, you are usually dodging craters to get anywhere. So, enjoy your "USA! USA! WE #1 W00T! W00T!" while you can. Idiots like you are fast making it an unlivable shithole.
Gates Announces Security Death Squads
That has got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever read on slashdot. I understand how it works not just because someone told me, but because I have used optical measuring equipment and understand the principles involved in measuring extremely small objects like atoms (I do have a degree in physics and a doctorate in electrical engineering). If you don't believe laser measuring equipment works as it does, then you must not believe that modern technology even exists!
My rather obvious point was that science does not require a belief. Science only requires practice, study and observation (well, and tons of coffee, but I digress).
Ha! You remind me of one of my students (back when I taught). Upon failing his exam and not understanding in the least why he got anything wrong, he boldly declared to me "I know physics!" He didn't and he didn't do very well.Try learning actual science for a change instead of mindlessly quoting ignorant bufoons like Rush Limbaugh. Sorry, but given a choice between (1) a great body of scientific work and research, along with the overwhealming scientific consensus, and (2) a guy who can't even get through his first year of college and has spent the last 20-30 years sitting on his butt behind a microphone blathering ideology out his cakehole, I think even someone as clearly ignorant as you are could see why I would choose option 1 (well, that and personally having a good understanding of actual physics).
But you are certainly right, though. Having a bunch of scientifically-uneducated lawyers (which most Congresscritters are) set science policy is, shall we say, not exactly the best of ideas. I think this whole attitude goes back to the ancient stupidity which basically said that the king knows all.