New Mars Forums

Ok, I just wanted to expand on what I thought was a rather thoughtprovoking statement. . . .

Yes; what if the government is not an democracy?  The will of the french people did some pretty bad stuff to themselves in the french revolution.  The American Government is more of a republic than a democracy (Senators where chosen by the states until fairly recently) and is made in such a way that protects the people from themselves.  If a "true" democracy exsisted, then it would quickly distingrate from lack of order and become more or less anarchy.  Not everyone can run a government, and not everyone should have something to do with government.  For example, if you rode a bus, would you trust just anyone to be your driver?  What if a suicidal drunk wanted to drive?  Of course it would limit your freedom to drive buses to implement rules pertaining as to who could drive your bus.  But the alternative to that would be worse. 

Obuiously, if a person really, really wanted to become a bus driver, he/she could simply take a class, recieve certification and drive away.  But the rules ensure that the interest is genuine, and the ablity conssumerate with that interest.

I know extremely obose people who benefit from walking in a pool for therapy.  They almost float, creating a condition of what can be described as low-g.  This seems to allow them greater moblity at a lessened risk of falling, thus encouraging them to exersise.  In this case, (and perhaps for heart patients and arthisis patients?) low g is benefictial.

ok, here are my predictions for 2004

1.  Health Care in the USA will nearly collapse under its own weight, promting a national emergacy.  Congress will narrowly rescuse it , but just barely.

2.  Bush will become a scafrical goat for his Mars plans.  I live right next to NASA Glenn and yet the press of my city has said nothing good of his plans, or even of the recent robot landings on mars.  I say he drops it like a hot poker iron and wins, or runs with it and dies a quick death in the election year.

3.  Espicosical Church breaks up over homosexual debate, Methodist Church (my demonation) debate explodes and threatens to break up in response to this.  The Methoodists are the largest protestant denomination in america to my knowledge, this debate moves from there to the national level.

4.  Kerry wins the democratic nomination as a darkhorse canidate to the very end.  Howard Dean seperates from the Democratic Party with his diehard supporters and is forgotten evermore. 

5.  Israel and Palestine continue to war, someone will write a report or a book describing the true situation in Israel, both sides will dennounce said report but will show what is really happening and change some persons to create a third party of thought denouncing vehmently both sides. 

6.  Pakistan and India have a convential war after Mufsharraf is killed.  Osama Bin Laden will participate and China will intervene, causing a nuclear showdown.  USA and china will go with Pakistan.

7. The USA will pull its naval units out of Japan and permit it to maintain its own defenses to spare units to the indian sea.  The JDF is already one of the strongest miltary forces in the world, and will be prominant in the china/pakistan/india showdown.

8.  Despite the promises of Bush, Iraq will continue to be occupied.  Unrest will grow critical with a pakistan/india/china showdown and will not improve.

9.  Russia will vacillate over china, quite possibly doing nothing given the sorry conditions of its miltary.  China will do nothing to russia given russia's nukes.

10.  The "Jobless Recovery"  in the USA will continue, with lower-paying job brackets increasing and higher pay decreasing.

To scale back would be to kill it.  Nasa is largely a pork-barrel outlet for money right now, with so many diffuse and unrealated projects that it is not likely many of them will surrive budget cuts as they are already underfunded pork projects to begin with.  The upcoming vote will determine NASA's surrival, a vote on the validatity of the space program, and in some ways it might be better to terminate the NASA program and start fresh and new.

Watch out, here is my platform. . . .

1.  I will solve the nuclear profileration problem and the enviromental problems by inviting foriegn contrys to fire their nuclear weapons at oil refinerys and our infrastructure.

2.  At the same time I will distribute the wealth of the nation to its most needy members by reviving the pony express, and I will announce when and where via use of a really, really loud poltician (I might release tragificant to do this duty, as there is no power anymore to do anything) to announce this.

3.  with no power for anything, the government will burn piles of money to produce smoke signals to communicate with each other.

4.  When we run out of money, we will use government forms, of which there is an infinate supply and shall never run out under any and all circumstances.

5.  We will tell the other nations of the world to follow our enviromentally friendly example and that we trust them not to exploit us in any way.

6.  The army and the navy will be disbanded and used to plant trees whereever they may be.

7.  Since it is difficult to grow trees out at sea, the navy will breed whales and other large marine animals.

8.  Taxes will be voluntary.

9.  The remaining rockets of the space program and all nuclear missiles will be used for fireworks.

10.  We will give up texas to mexico and californa/puerto rico to spain.  After all, we are oppressors of the colonial powers!

11.  The land will be restored to its natural state, which will be decided by the local inhabitances what exactly that shall be.

I come from a rather affulent community, although I won't be staying in it long as my father has lost his job.  The other three communitys in my school district are nowhere as affulent as my community.   The high school I go to could be considered one of the poorer, more "crummy" HS in the area, but for students who want to get an education it is perfectly fine w/  many advanced courses and collage level courses.  Unfortantly, all the better teachers teach the advanced courses and the worst ones teach the lower level courses.  Although many are supportative, many just don't care and just want to do the following-

1.  Pass struggling student at almost any cost
2.  Ingore struggling student because he/she fits in with an streotype of a slacker/bum or a racial sterotype. . .
3.  Focus only on the students that do well and ingore the rest.  In short, have the top 10% of class become a exclusive club.  (clique?)

I have been fortante to expierence a much better (academically) school where there is no real clique.  However, I have been at my present one since freshman year, and have been equally fortanate to be able to take the better classes.  I do believe that more vocational education would readress the balance between those cut out for college and those who are not.

hmmmm. . . .tell that to the employees of the miltary industrial complex that.  They will fight hard, and we can't win cause they got all the good weapons. . . .

I like how you think.

I don't watch any of the music programs as I cannot appreciate much of any music at all, but I do appreciate the historical shows and pretty much anything NOVA comes up with is great.  I'm too cheap to get cable, so I have never seen the discovery chanel.  What I have seen of cable is not pleasurable to my mind, but it sure titalates my eyes (rubs eyes in rememberance of when I saw some cable in a hotel room. . . )

Does anyone know why the history aka "hitler" channel has no captions?

There is a local HS whose mascot is the "Norwalk Truckers". 

Imagine what they call the PTA.

"Mother Truckers. . ."

I feel sorry for those guys. . .

Mr Spoc. . .no wait, RobertDyck, how do you feel about orion?  I read the book but the pusher plate design bothers me as I have not yet read a solution to the event were as a bomb doesn't fire.  When the bomb doesn't fire, there is nothing to stop the plate from releasing itself from the ship.  Nukes are not as reliable as they are made up to be, as we have only exploded two (at least to my knowledge) in operational conditions of any sort.  I doubt that it will ever be lanched from earth, but I do believe if it is possible then someday colonists will make their own to move asteroids around, as I can't imagine what else to use all that power for.

Really, really, really drunk, I take it.  But the concept is not so far-fetched (except for the intersteller aliens, which I leave to others) to build miltary stuff otherwares.

Why apoligize to islam and ingore judaism and christianity? 

Careful, or you may meet some dangerous Calvinists, the ones your parents told you to stay away from.   :angry:

Fuel is heavy, so that could be horrendously expensive in its own right, so I doubt it could be done well.  Don't forget that in time a lot of that fuel could boil off.  I like the statellite idea a lot, it sounds good, and could def be done with a minuim of budget and have good repercussions.

As for phobos and diemos, why don't we sponser a mining company to do that work, so that someone has experience, and the gov will be paying for this (I assume).  If mining does it, people will get crazy ideas and then rape the asteroid belts which would be a good thing for all of us concerned.