New Mars Forums

Correct, the argument of the side against using embryonic stem cells is completely focused on the actual process of harvesting the cells - which neccessarily entails the destruction of the embryo in question currently (except for techniques like the umbilical cord extraction mentioned above). It's primarily an argument based on 'what is a human', and I side with the religious conservatives here.

In fact, judging by the likelihood of human speciation in the future - I figure the odds of that happening via genetic tinkering in the next century being higher than the chances of Mars colonization in the same time period - it's probably a smart bet to agree with the line of reasoning that human life begins at conception, because it's setting a precendent that the definition for 'human' should be set as wide as possible. That will come in handy when the inevitable occurs and the genus homo gains a new member.

BTW, I feel that germline engineering is inevitable. It's one of those arms-race scenarios where if you don't do it, someone else will and god help you if you don't keep up. The trouble Europe has with its overly generous welfare systems, low productivity and high unemployment right now will look like nothing if their GM phobia forces them to compete against a whole slew of genetically enhanced Americans, Chinese, Koreans, etc, just for an example. On the other hand, I question how much 'genetic stratification' will occur - I suppose it depends on how expensive the procedure is. If it's cheap, you might see a push for some sort of standard set of 'upgrades', the way states require certain vaccinations for schoolchildren.

I also question the 'Gattaca' fear, partially because people are irrational (and thus there will be a significant amount of discrimination against the 'genetically enhanced') and partly because there is no particular 'sweet spot' of desireable upgrades which would be must-have. The designer babies would be a pretty diverse bunch.

As for Cobra's original question:

I do favor the latter more than the former, for the simple reason that, biologically, adaptive radiation is the best long-term survival strategy. It's an insurance policy for the heritage of intelligent life on Earth against an uncertain universe.

The main mistake all of the "aliens will be peaceful/mature/whatever" side of the argument is making is that they seem to be assuming that ALL members of an alien species will not view it as beneficial to wipe out humanity. Whether the aliens as a whole are violent or not is entirely immaterial. All you need is an alien Osama or General Jack D. Ripper to unleash hell.

That makes

more a liability than any help. You only need *one* small group of aliens with vastly superior technology to annihilate large numbers of comparative primitives such as ourselves. Call it the Law of Cortez, because it's the main danger.

It's human nature to unconsciously assume that individuals in a foreign culture act as a monolithic mass. We've largely managed to remember this isn't true - on Earth - but we really need to remember that aliens will be just as contentious a lot, and have their own factions, internal struggles, religious disputes/fundies, and the like.

You either aren't sleeping right, or have a very, very good memory, or have trained yourself to immediately review your dreams in their entirety upon waking, when they're still fresh in your mind - in which case you won't forget the dreams, period.

If something happens which forces me to get up and move immediately for some reason, I don't remember my dreams, otherwise, I remember them as well as I remember my waking actions and for about as long. That's due to immediate review of the dreams in question. Last night's slate of dreams included a costume party, a quiz contest, driving around in my car and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken, and arguing with some guy about the load-distributing hitch on his car and whether it could handle a particular U-Haul trailer or not. As you can see, not very interesting compared to the ninja/undead grudge match from four days ago.

I am aware that the current explanation for dreams is that they involve the reorganization and assimilation of varius thoughts, experiences, and memories accumulated over the previous period of wakefulness. The reason that I said:

is because I do keep track of what I'm dreaming of, and I also know what I was doing/thinking the previous day, and there is generally little or no correlation. Instead, the dreams tend to follow particular themes independent of what I'm doing in 'waking life', with dreams that can be identifiably tied to real world events or issues only occurring when I'm stressed out. I'm discounting dreams where I realized I fell asleep, of course, because you can control the dreams when you do that.  :laugh:

As for why I do that, call me crazy if you want, but I figure I spend a good chunk of my life asleep, so I damn well want to remember what's happening during it.

"Very well," Trebuchet said, while standing on a table in the TempleBar after one too many shots of rather strong Martian vodka. "If the rabbit-lovers of the underground won't come to negotiate with us, we'll go pick them up. At rabbitpoint," he clarified.

"They're underwater!" one of the TempleBar patrons said. Whether it was a regular or one of Lord Vlork's heavily armed, white-armored 'diplomats' wasn't immediately obvious and wasn't much of an issue anyways - Trebuchet's heavily armed and even more heavily intoxicated bar regulars were, man (or woman) for man almost as good as actual soldiers, and far more unpredictable.

Trebuchet frowned, having forgotten that little detail due to the excesses of a week-long Happy Hour. "We'll build a submarine! The first submarine on Mars! And it will bring the negotiators from the Hellas basin!"

This was met by scattered applause, several rounds for the house, and a large number of people trying to sneak out without paying their bills. It would remain to be seen whether a submarine could actually be built and used without killing all aboard, but such issues are triflingly minor to Martians. After all, they had survived mutant rabbits, bad food, more rabbits, Yu Knights, more rabbits, and more Yu Knights... come to think of it, there was a distressing regularity to the dangers of Mars, and they all had a single source.

Trebuchet saw the clouds of war gathering over Mars. Sadly, they would bring only bloodshed and not precious water... although he supposed that blood might help in the terraforming project as well. "Note to self," he wrote on a bar napkin, "send case of Phobos Red to scientists in exchange for study on blood in Mart. terraforming." Satisfied, he tacked the note to the wall behind the bar and then returned to his briefly interrupted wailign about the coming war. Chaos and bloodshed were bad for business, no matter how many battle-scarred veterans came in after the shooting stopped for beer and rabbit stew. "Why couldn't we all just get along and declare war on Earth, like we should?"

He brightened. "Hmm, why shouldn't we?" He turned the bar over to his employees for a few minutes and drafted a few messages on the computer in the back. "To Lord Vlork, Dark Lord of Mars, Prophet of Doom ™, Scourge of Rabbits, Destroyer of the Yu Knights, etc, etc..." (He really needs to cut down on the titles, trebuchet thought)"... and to the leaders of the settlements in the caves of Hellas and whomever else it may concern. The TempleBar of Chryse Planitia cordially invite you to a summit meeting under flag of truce, to discuss differences of opinion, matters of mutual import - and enjoy the finest distilled spirits and beers on Mars at Mars's only sports bar. indigeonous religious temple complex, and rabbit racing track, complete with 24' satellite dish recieving over 200 Earth channels! Sincerely, Trebuchet.

He nodded in satisfaction and sent the email over all open channels. At one stroke, he had opened diplomatic negotiations AND bought lots of free publicity... all in a day's work! NOw he only had to make sure that his insurance was paid up before both sides arrived, and also make sure that the air filters were keeping the cocaine in the dust storm *outside* of the TempleBar.

What 'Civil War'? You guys are all talk. Get a house of Congress back or maybe the Presidency and then you might be strong enough for us to take you seriously. 

They understand and don't comment. If I saw that bumper sticker, I'd have rolled my eyes and thought, "Oh, another leftist idiot making 'cute' statements" and blown you off.

As far as BWhite's post goes, the same thought applies.

Hey, that $395/night one isn't exactly breaking the bank, you know. When you consider the hotel/tickets/miscellaneous expenses it's going to be ballpark in the same area as a trip to Disney World, maybe a bit more expensive.

The governments of the world basically made sure that Antarctica is off-limits to human colonization, which is why only some scientific teams are there harassing the penguins.

As for...

This question is quite easy to answer: the people who want to leave either find this planet not beautiful, not comfortable, or both. Or they want a chance to build their own place, or they don't like a lot of their fellow earthlings for whatever reason. They might simply feel that the Earth is going to go up in nuclear fire or whatever someday. There are plenty of good reasons to want to get off Earth. As for "Why Mars?", it's probably because it's a combination of it being comparatively close and nonhostile. I mean, if you could build some sort of warp-drive spacecraft able to cross light years in a flash, people would go looking further afield for less hostile worlds, but since we can't, and Mars is reasonably good and within reach, it's what's available.

Now, were you to be able to build home-built spacecraft sturdy enough to reach Mars - a kind of modern-day Conestoga Wagon - I think you'd be amazed at the number of people willing to head out from Earth to Mars or the asteroids. There are a lot of restless people missing the frontier out there...

Real ligers do look like that, the male ones, anyways - they have a raggy version of the lion's mane, and those paler tripes with blotches towards the tail.

Here, look at this liger in the US: http://www.sierrasafarizoo.com/animals/liger.htm]LIGER

I look forward to the first Open Source Pistol. 

Edit: But law enforcement is going to be pretty unhappy about it.

When Fannie Mae needs money to give to homebuyers, they bundle a bunch of mortgages together, then chop the bundle into lots of small bonds purchaseable by the average investor, because only a tiny percentage of private investors could handle the financial burden of an entire mortgage at once.

The information economy has the *opposite* problem: the marginal cost of any one program is too low to make worthwhile. I suggest running the process in reverse. Instead of charging some fixed amount per song or album, if I were running Sony Music or something, I'd bundle piles of songs together - say, all rock and roll - and charge a monthly fee, say $9.99, for the right to download that music from a company website. As much music as they want, whenever they want. Give them a card that gets them discounts to concerts and band-related merchandise for bands with a Sony Music label. People will legally download the music for a fair market value, for the most part. Part of the problem with music piracy is that people feel ripped off paying $15-20 for a $.50 CD. They wouldn't mind if Sony lets them download as much or as little as possible, and the bandwidth would be cheap or free (How free? Imagine if Sony is smart, and offers free or reduced price music subscription to people who mirror a certain number of music files for them. Considering how many people *upload* those pirated music files, there's potential).

That would work for music, or ebooks, or movies, because content providing companies have a wide variety of products to sell and can efficiently bundle them. For software and such, though, it wouldn't work, something else would have to be thought up.