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#126 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-29 07:20:26
Donald Trump, his company and partners repeatedly turned to wealthy Russians and oligarchs from former Soviet republics. Trump's business network reached alleged Russian mobsters and all of this is factural not fake news.....With the devil in the details are all hidden in but the House GOP blocks effort by Democrats to obtain Trump's taxes and with ..... hindering the investigative process as the truth is about to be found out... House panel’s Russia probe effectively put on hold effectively shielding Trump.....Devin Nunes Vows To ‘Never’ Reveal Source Of White House Leak
The other day the company showed Trump in a cab after he had made a deal with them but in the end this is the results Layoffs Set To Begin At Indiana Factory Despite Trump Tweet, Promises The president said he would stop this kind of thing from happening. Trump made saving jobs for blue collar workers a centerpiece of his successful campaign and yet all there seems to be are more job losses with each signing of the pen.....
How does it affect us? That is the most important question of all. The Democrats have shown how useful they can be to the Russians and Soviets. The Democrats have cut the Defense budget many times, they have opposed missile defense, they wanted open dialog with Soviet Puppet states in the East Bloc, it was Barack Obama that opened relations with Cuba, all without asking the Cubans for a thing! As for Putin, I think he needs an Enemy in America, not a friend, he needs that Enemy to distract the Russian population from what a terrible job he's doing with the Russian economy, it wants to take over a number of states bordering Russia, but its not so much that he wants the land, but that he wants to stir up a new Cold War, and the Democrats don't make a good Enemy for the Russians, they keep rolling over and playing dead, worse they apologize for America, and Putin doesn't want that, he need someone he could blame as the Aggressor so when he invades some other country, he could tell his people that the United States started it, and that is a hard story o tell when you got someone like Obama running the United States. Putin never really like Obama very much, he doesn't make a respectable adversary, and Putin needed an adversary.
Trump is more likely to be an adversary than Hillary Clinton was, Trump is his own man, if the Russians helped him, he probably considers them suckers, he's going to increase military spending, he's going to insist that our allies pay their fair share of NATO, he's not afraid of cutting the budget.
#127 Re: Not So Free Chat » When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics. » 2017-03-28 20:55:02
Because that connection is counterintuitive to make, when glaciers melt, you get more water not less. Seems to me that if the water cycle fails, you just irrigate to make the difference, if you can build an artificial mountain chain that is 2 miles tall, irrigating the globe as if it were Lowell's Mars should be "small potatoes."
#128 Re: Not So Free Chat » When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics. » 2017-03-28 20:06:24
To reduce CO2 in the air one can put solar powered units out in the oceans that pump and spray the water high into the air to create a means to obsorb it on the way down. Allow the unit to move as the sun crosses more like a sail boat tacking its turns north to south in order to keep mixing the ocean concentration as we go.
The same solar shade that would benefit venus we can design for use here on earth if it is indeed solar caused.
Seems like a lot of trouble just to store water as ice, why can't it be stored as water? My solution is simpler, it tackles the problem directly instead of trying to freeze the Earth so water forms glaciers on land, just build a big reservoir.
#129 Re: Not So Free Chat » When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics. » 2017-03-28 20:01:37
Tom, there are lots of mountains on Earth that a a mile or two (or more) tall. And humans did not build a single one of them!
The largest structures ever built by man are the Great Pyramids in Egypt, and they pale into insignificance, in comparison to any of those mountains, much less your wall idea, which is orders of magnitude larger in volume and mass.
I don't care that Gerard O'Neill (and some others) ran "designs" (they are concepts, they are NOT designs) for gigantic habitats in space. Those claims rest on the assumptions that (1) we can summon the collective will to embark on a project that utterly dwarfs the Pyramids, and (2) that we will learn how to construct real engineering materials with tensile strength and significant ductility out of whatever rocks we can find out there.
The first assumption is denied by the 3000 years of history since the pyramids were built. Nothing since, not even the Great Wall of China, is of that scale. The second assumption is denied by existing technology: we DO NOT KNOW how to make real engineering materials out of space rocks.
That second is why there are lots of inspiring illustrations, but NO engineering drawings and material specifications, for anything even remotely like an O'Neill habitat. Maybe some day. But no time soon.
As for climate change, I myself tend to think we are already past any "tipping points", because of the 3-century estimated lifetime of any given ton of CO2 we add to the air. And no, I don't think all the ice will melt, although it has in the geologic past. About half of Greenland, perhaps half of west Antarctica, and pretty much all the mountain glaciers is what I think will melt.
That's about 6-8 meters sea level rise. The majority of Earth's population will get flooded out. The majority of our largest cities and institutions will have to be moved. Without mountain glaciers feeding rivers, a lot of currently arable land will desertify. Ain't that enough to cause catastrophic problems? Does it really matter if it takes 200 years or 50 years?
The sky hasn't fallen yet, but sooner or later it will. What we might (or might not) be able to do is slow the rate of the disaster, by reducing those activities of ours that we know act in the wrong direction. That being said, I oppose attempting "geoengineering", because most of those ideas are so irreversible, and we have proven ourselves so fallible throughout history.
Putting some giant reflective film structures in orbit about the Earth to reflect sunlight before it hits the atmosphere? Such a scheme is much lighter in scale and volume than a pyramid, and it is reversible. That is crucially important if we are wrong, and/or the crisis passes. THAT I could support. That is something we could actually do. As is reducing CO2 emissions, which I actually think is too little, too late, but it cannot hurt.
GW
It can because it will cost money! and my mountain scheme will at least give you something to show for the expense CO2 reduction will not!
#130 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-28 18:58:34
Well, for the most part, there are no Democratic-controlled media, anymore than there are any Republican-controlled media, but ONLY if you stick with the same outlets we have used since the invention of television. 90+% of internet sites are fake crap. And then there's Faux (Fox) News,
And there you are tryng to discredit Fox News so the Democrats can have their Media monopoly without Fox telling a different story from what they all agree on!
which is right wing entertainment,
So you'd rather just have Democratic Party News telling you what a great job the Democrats are all doing and what a racist Party the PArty of Lincoln is, and then they can enslave is all! Democrats were the "slave party" that the Republicans opposed, now the Democrats want to enslave everybody, not just black people, they want a one-party state, they want one news outlet disguised as many new outlets but all telling the same story!
more than any sort of balanced news (with exceptions for certain individual reporters). Rupert Murdoch said so, when he founded it.
Among the mainstream, there are editorial biases: I can see the Democrat-leaning of NBC in their headlines and rhetoric, but the facts in the stories match the other networks.
Which are also controlled by the Democratic Party
I haven't paid much attention to ABC since Disney bought them, because entertainment dominates over news now there, by and large.
ABC is left leaning, they had to insert their obligatory gay characters in their television programming, this is all the rage in most leftwing entertainment shows
CBS and PBS seem reasonably objective,
You never heard Roger Mudd try to play "Gotcha" with President Bush? Walter Cronkite was left leaning, he started giving left-leaning editorials about the Vietnam War!
as do AP and UPI. You have to look at more than one to see the facts-in-common,
Those are the big "letter networks" they are part of the establishment, they are left leaning. Fox News is not a "letter network", neither is Breitbart News or CRTV
and so read past any editorial content. Lots of folks claim CNN is neutral, but I see both diluted content driven by 24/7 time-filling needs, and a Republican editorial bias in them.
They seem obsessed with reporting on Rumors of a Trump-Russia connection when their is no evidence, so they are reporting on an FBI investigation of it where no evidence as turned up. How about the lost civilization of Atlantis, is that News? No one has discovered it yet, how about reporting on people looking for the Lost Civilization of Atlantis but not finding it yet, should that be reported as News?
But, opinions can differ.
I never put any faith in the tabloids, and as I said above, most internet sites are far worse yet.
When the Media is corrupt and controlled by the Democrats, then in many cases, we are forced to rely on smaller independent tabloids, maybe they will get bigger and provide competition for the "letter networks" and newspapers such as the New York Times.
These I class right up there in rabble-rousing stir-up-trouble fake news right alongside talk radio, which in the US is 99%+ far right wing extremist crap.
Well the economy did pick up steam when Trump got elected, the letter networks failed to report on Donald Trump surging in the polls right before he got elected, and then his election surprised all of them, did they even try to produce accurate poll results, or was it all propaganda designed to help Hillary?
You have to look at multiple sources, including those you don't much like, before you can tell what is true and what is not. Listening only to what you want to hear is self delusion. It will lead you astray. It always has.
GW
Multiple sources that say the same thing and often are equally wrong in the same way. They were wrong about the election, and then they are trying to lie once more to disrupt the Trump Administration, so why should I trust them after they failed to forsee the Trump victory, why should they be right this time if they were all wrong the last time? Its time ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS got replaced with more honest and truthful news reporting organizations that don't insert their editorial opinions in their news stories! We need to get back to basic journalism, "just report the facts!"
#131 Re: Not So Free Chat » When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics. » 2017-03-28 07:37:41
The east Antarctic ice cap varies between 1 and 2 miles thick. Discounting the difference between ice and water densities, you are looking at a lake of meltwater around a mile to two miles deep, to retain all that melted ice above current sea levels atop east Antarctica.
While the Chinese did build their Great Wall with the lengths crudely on the scale required (1000's of miles), it was only around 3 m tall. We have since learned to construct walls that are taller, but there are no walls taller than those of the 1/3-mile-tall building in the middle east, and its footprint is quite small (around 100 m).
The wall you are talking about is not a wall, it is an impoundment dam holding back water under gravitational pressure. The tallest such things men have ever built are about 1000 feet tall (Hoover Dam), holding back a base level pressure of about 400 psi, or about 28 atmospheres.
What you are talking about is 5000 to 10,000 feet tall, with a base pressure in the 340 to 680 atmosphere range. That is substantially more than an order of magnitude beyond anything ever attempted. Just what materials could we make such a thing from? Just how could we pay for marshaling the effort to construct a thing 500 to 1000 times taller than the Great Wall of China, and as long to longer than that same Great Wall?
You are talking about something only God could build, not anything humans can build. Please get real, Tom. Your flights of fancy are ridiculously unrelated to human capabilities.
GW
Is terraforming Mars easier or harder than building that wall? A 2-mile high earthen wall? There are plenty of mountains that are taller than 2 miles high, Mount Everest is for example 5 miles high! As for never having done it before, we have also never terraformed Mars before, we haven't even deliberately altered the Earth's climate before. You talk about the resources that need to be marshalled to build that wall, yet getting everybody to lower their carbon-dioxide output also requires a lot of resources, it is expensive, it costs jobs! The only difference is we are not guaranteed results if we lower our carbon-emissions, its going to cost a lot of money, but the percentage of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere might not be the only thing that is warming this planet up. (If indeed it s warming up at all!) But if we take your assumption, there maybe other things that are also causing the Earth to warm up, such as the Solar output for instance, and there is the fact that we already added to the carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, and that amount is going to stay there for a while until plant life can remove it. I heard it cited in many cases that the Earth would continue to warm even if the human race became extinct, and didn't add a single kilogram of carbon-dioxide more. The oceans would continue to rise if we stopped all our carbon dioxide output, it will still costs a lot of money to do so, but we would not be achieving the result we need to if we are going to spend the money, the oceans will still rise and flood our homes, in spite of the sacrifices we make to cut carbon emissions, building an Earthen dam will stop the oceans from rising regardless of the cause of global warming, whether its man made or not, I think that would be a better investment of our resources than in cutting carbon emissions, and we don't have to get the whole planet to cooperate if we do choose to build that wall.
You want an example of walls that are 2-miles high, this O'Neill cylinder is 4 miles wide and 20 miles long, the important part of it for us to know is that it is 4 miles wide, that means its walls are 2 miles high to hold in atmosphere. The size of this structure is entirely without precedent in human history, nothing like it has ever been built by humans whether on the ground or in space. O'Neill has even stated that a structure up to 5 times the size of this O'Neill Cylinder could be build, that would mean a cylinder 20 miles wide and 100 miles long! A society which is building space colonies and terraforming Mars is also a society which can solve the problem of a rising sea level, that is where Kim Stanley Robinson was off in his Mars novels, he describes a society that had completely terraformed Mars in his third novel, but where an Earth is suffering from the effects of global warming and sea level rising due to the melting Antarctic ice sheets. Yes I know he wanted to embed a political statement about global warming in his novel, but the existence on unintended global warming is inconsistent when he has shown that humans have terraformed Mars, it is hard to believe that Mars would have a higher priority than Earth, or that there would till be a Third World left after all this time and technological progress! We don't actually see much of Earth in his novels until the third one! Doesn't prove a thing of course, it is fiction after all, but the only examples we can cite for the stuff we want to do are ficticious examples. If building that wall is folly, then so is cutting our carbon emissions, one leaves a physical trace, while the other leaves only the absence of some carbon-dioxide in our atmosphere if successful, but require a lot of resources, I can't really say which would require more. You have not proved which project would be more expensive.
#132 Re: Not So Free Chat » Election Meddling » 2017-03-28 07:08:17
Devin Nunes actions the day before his announcement that he saw information suggesting that communications of then-President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers may have been swept up in surveillance of other foreign nationals. The attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation and Nunes' actions mean he can't conduct an impartial investigation into potential Trump-Russia ties either. He should do likewise after running to anyone that was not part of the congressional panel about what was seen.
Why is it important to keep the United States President in the dark about what is now his own executive branch spying on him? I don't think it is Congress's job to spy on the President and keep secrets about that from him. You are forgetting Donald Trump is the Commander in chief and president of the United States, and runs the executive branch of the government, there should be no secrets kept from him if he is to properly run it! Whatever secret operations there were in the past, including against him, he should have access to and be made aware of. Do you believe in a rogue government! Should the Bureaucrats be running the government and not our elected officials? Congress doesn't run the Executive Branch, there is nothing that the executive branch has done that Congress should be made aware of and not the President! If anyone should not have been President it was Barack Obama, he had contacts with various Communists, not Russians mind you but actual Communists! He met with Fidel Castro for God's sake! If meeting with the Russian Ambassador is a crime, then surely meeting with Fidel Castro also must be a crime!
Devin Nunes Met Source On White House Grounds Day Before Claiming Trump Team Was Surveilled. Nunes met the source on White House grounds in order to view sensitive information in a “secure location,”. The House Intelligence Committee chairman’s allegations about the Obama administration’s spying operations keep getting weirder.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nun … 2eaab61087?
....The wikileaks is also guarding its side of the involvement as well, distancing itself from longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone. Talking To Guccifer 2.0, Doesn’t Mean I Colluded With Russians On Election. No you broke the law with regards to hacking collusion which is still a crime....During a speech in Florida last August, after Wikileaks printed hacked DNC emails, Stone said he had “communicated” with Assange and predicted that more documents would be leaked in an “October surprise.” Which is knowing the facts of what you have done and that is collusion....
#133 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-27 20:11:55
Muslims themselves will need to take care of their own terrorist problem, it is their problem, not ours! We need to show the Muslims that terrorism won't work, they won't get what they want from us if they resort to terrorism, thus we should not show weakness.
#134 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-27 11:34:06
Connections between Team Trump and Russia are long confirmed (for one thing the Russian mafia is one of The Donald's biggest investors). Collusion between Team Trump and Russia to sway voter's opinions with fake news stuff: lots of smoke, no fire. Worth continuing to dig, though, just because of the smoke. As for monkeying with vote tallies, it's scary: they could have done it, but the evidence says they did not. Yet.
The fake news thing is a serious threat, and is partially attributable to the dumbing-down of education in recent decades. Few today could pass a 3rd grade test from a century ago. Stupid people are easier to rule, and to fool with propaganda: that's why the dumbing-down was done. That needs reversal, but it will take generations to fully correct. Until it is corrected, idiotic political ideologies will continue to substitute for practical policy suggestions, and we will continue to be awash in venal politicians, with no statesmen around at all.
Monkeying with vote tallies (by anyone, foreign or domestic) is stopped by using paper ballots. It may be slow and inconvenient, but it cannot be hacked, if no computers are involved. But it has to be done right: no more of that hanging-chad or misprinted butterfly-ballot bullshit. Graphite marks in ovals on paper can be read pretty reliably. There ought to be some sort of national standard for ballot format that the states can use, improve-on, and enforce for themselves.
As for Russian tampering-by-hacking or fake newsdissemination, may "tit for tat" is something we should do.
GW
The connection between Trump and the Russians is fake news, it all stemmed from a single joke Trump told when Hillary Clinton couldn't or wouldn't account for 30,000 missing e-mails, so Trump suggested that Vladimir Putin probably had them, and suggested that he come forward, what happened next was pure McCarthyite tactics by the Media, and they blew up up into a Russian-Trump conspiracy that didn't exist, all from that single joke Trump told! The Democrats have nothing on Donald Trump, all they can do is spread fake news through their control of these media outlets and that is what they are doing!
#135 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-27 11:24:57
Tom,
I don't feel the least bit guilty over the color of my skin and it's not something I need to apologize for. I just don't give a damn about peoples' skin color. I've met enough people from enough different parts of the world to know that appearances count for very little, attitude counts for substantially more, and irrespective of appearances and attitudes, behavior is very nearly all that matters. Diatribes against various people with varying amounts of melanin in their skin misses the readily discernible issues with value systems.
At this point in human history, Islam is a religion with a substantial number of followers who practice violence towards non-believers and different sects of the same religion. If we were living a few centuries back in time, I would have had a similar opinion towards Christianity. However, in 2017 I haven't seen very many Christians, Buddhists, or Jews intentionally driving motor vehicles into people or blowing themselves up in the middle of shopping malls. There will be someone along shortly to point out that what's generally true is not universally true, but what's generally true is still generally true and my point still stands.
With respect to politics, I think that the application of generalization to belief systems is what separates liberal thinking from conservative thinking. As it pertains to thought process, the liberals are sorting for similarities and the conservatives are sorting for differences. That explains nearly perfectly why liberals can't differentiate generality from universality (they're options people) and why conservatives are constantly trying to differentiate people / places / things (they're procedural people, like you, Tom).
Let's illustrate how this works in the exchange of ideas between you and Rob:
Rob asked when the cycle of violence would stop. That question clearly illustrates that he believes that his actions determine the actions of other people. To the extent that he interacts with rational people, that's certainly true. That's sorting for similarities. However, human behavior is seldom rational and behaviors tied to religious practices are typically highly irrational. In your responses to Rob, you keep pointing out what's different between them / us. Rob makes a statement and then you counter with how the detail or circumstance of an event was "different" from whatever Rob stated. That's sorting for differences.
You two speak the same language and you come from the same culture / society, but you can't communicate with each other in any meaningful way. Imagine that you don't speak the same language and come from a completely different culture. That'd be why nobody over here really understands what's going on in the Middle East. The "similarities" people think they're just like us and the "differences" people think they're completely different from us. Unfortunately, the answer is "no" to both ideas. They're not "just like us", nor are they're "entirely different" from us, either.
The two major religions in our culture, Christianity and Judaism, originated in the middle east, these two religions were spread by the Roman Empire when in conquered the middle east, it was spread throughout Europe, North Africa, and western Asia, and then Rome fell, in the Dark Ages came a new religion, this one is called Islam, its founder is named Muhammad, it was Muhammad and his religion that made Middle east culture alien to our own, prior to the arrival if Islam, middle easterners didn't think that much differently from ourselves. Christianity defended itself from the onslaught of Islam during the Crusades, Islam managed to conquer the Middle East, North Africa, and made inroads into Europe itself, with Spain and Turkey being Islamic colonies. The Spaniards fought back and drove the Muslims out of their country prior to 1492, other than that, and despite the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Islam held onto its gains, the Christian World, unlike in Spain, did not try to rechristianize them. It is odd that the main religious denomination of the Democratic Party are Muslims. Muslims are the only group within the Democratic constituencies that take their religion seriously! You have a lot of "Cafeteria Catholics", you have your "Atheist Jews" that are "cultural Jews" only, kind of like Bernie Sanders, but the only devout group within the Democratic Party are Muslims, they pray five times a day, the women cover themselves, their beliefs are largely conservative, they don't believe in women's rights, they think gay people ought to be put to death, and prior to the 9/11 attack, they would have tended to be Republicans, but now because of their associations with terrorists, they have fallen into the Democratic Camp. Why is this exactly? The set up is like this: a bomb goes off, killing a bunch of westerners, some Muslim takes credit for setting off this bomb and says he did it for Allah, and naturally these westerners get quite angry with Muslims for being a apart of this, and there is a backlash against them. Liberals tend to be only concerned with this backlash against Muslims, and not for the victims of these Islamic attacks, because they are so filled with White Guilt, they figure white people had it coming and don't need defending, and instead believe that the World needs to be defended against white people, so whoever strikes out against white culture and receives a backlash, needs defending, but white people themselves are presumed guilty by them.
#136 Re: Not So Free Chat » Nothing in particular » 2017-03-23 23:54:21
Tom Kalbfus wrote:Curious that you wanted to start at the top, at the Federal Level rather than rising up through the local level as most politicians do.
A few years ago, the media strongly criticized one politician who ran provincially, then ran federally, then ran provincially again. He kept trying to get elected, meaning tried to get work, but failed. And realize each time costs a lot of money. The media strongly criticized him for running provincially when he had expressed a desire to run federally. They said if voters elected him, he would just quit his job to federally again. The media wanted politicians to focus on one level. Yes, there are cases were politicians move from one level to another. A former federal cabinet minister, in the last government (other party) has won the leadership of the provincial party in Alberta. A number of years go an NDP federal Member of Parliament quit so she could run for mayor in my city. She lost, so now is not employed as a politician at all. But I keep thinking of that individual whom the media criticized for trying to rise through provincial to federal. So I tried to focus on just one.
However, in 2001 I was elected president of the local community association. That just lasted one winter. A few years ago I was elected to the board of directors for that same organization. I've been president of the provincial constituency association, and federal riding association. When the Conservatives were the federal government 2006-2015, they changed the name from "riding" to "electoral district". That's the American name; we're Canada, we don't need to use American names. It means the same thing, but why use the American name? Obviously I consider the other major party to be dumb-ass. But when I was president of the provincial association, I was also a member of the provincial council. And when I was president of the federal association, I had a seat on the executive for the provincial association of the federal party.
So if I were to do what you suggest, the next step would be provincial MLA: Member of the Legislative Assembly. That's what it's called in Manitoba. They have different titles in different provinces.
Federal Riding Association
The above is the image that comes to mind when you say that, perhaps your Prime Minister changed the name to avoid confusion. We both speak English, why would you want to pretend you speak a different language just because you live in a different country? English is English, we both inherited it from "Mother England!" In America we speak English, so do you! Do you know what the word "Federal" means? "Federal" means most of the power is derived from the states, or in your case provinces, the Fedral government exists only to do those things the states or provinces cannot do for themselves, that is what Federalism means. In a Federal system, most politicians rise up through local and state offices first, and use their records of their offices they held in state positions to justify running for a higher Federal office. Only Billionaires can get away with running for the highest office in the land first!
#137 Re: Human missions » The Moon versus Mars; Science versus Economics? » 2017-03-23 23:38:25
There is one at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
#138 Re: Not So Free Chat » Nothing in particular » 2017-03-23 12:29:24
Well what happens when you don't have employees?
The manager of the store was working late at night, a customer walked in, it was 2 AM, this was supposed to be a 24-hour convenience store, and he needed to hire some employees, but he kept on sending them to HR and they kept refusing to hire them, so the Manager is stuck as the lone store operator.
#139 Re: Not So Free Chat » Nothing in particular » 2017-03-23 10:17:31
HR can't interview everybody. They have a certain idea about who they want to hire, if a person does not match what it is they are looking for, they will find some excuse to turn them away. What they say to you isn't necessarily the actual reason. People have a tendency not to say what is on their minds in this politically correct world we are living in.
#140 Re: Human missions » Apollo 11 REDUX » 2017-03-23 10:13:35
Imagine if the US Government paid General Dynamics to build a car and sell it to the public using a cost plus contract. General Dynamics then will come up with several car models that they propose to build, and the government will pick which one, then there will be cost overruns which the government pays for and General Dynamics will reap a huge profit. Would you want to buy a General Dynamics Car is made by this process?
#141 Re: Human missions » Apollo 11 REDUX » 2017-03-23 08:53:12
They just have to be a little more competitive that the Russians, they can retrieve their lower stages, the Russians can't, so SpaceX's operating expenses are lower than the Russians, they will take as much profit as they can while remaining more competitive than the Russians in launch rates. Eventually other companies will figure out how to reuse their rocket boosters and the price will come down further with competition, but right now SpaceX has a sort of monopoly in this technology, and they are cashing in. This will fuel the drive to make further technological innovations when their competitors finally do replicate this technology, they'll have something else.
#142 Re: Not So Free Chat » Nothing in particular » 2017-03-23 08:47:37
kbd512 wrote:If you don't have a current security clearance issued by the Canadian or US government, then that's the most probable reason why SpaceX won't hire you even if you've otherwise fulfilled ITAR clearance requirements. As a function of the use of the Falcon 9 for national security missions, it's a safe bet that some aspect of the work is classified. The security clearances aren't cheap and obtaining them is a process to be sure.
The response by HR said their reason was I was not a US resident. They said that if I were to become a US resident, I could re-apply. There is no other reason. And as I said, I received ITAR clearance for ballistic missiles, and specifically documents about communications equipment on Shuttle orbiters. That included schematics and programming instructions for all equipment. For a spacecraft carrying American astronauts. I would think that has tighter security than what SpaceX is doing. SpaceX may consider their corporate secrets important, but American security would consider the Shuttle more important. And I did get all that stuff for Shuttle. And no, I won't tell you any technical details of what was included, because it's classified. I know Shuttle has been decommissioned, but I have to prove I can work with classified information. The bid process for that NASA contract was public domain, so I can tell you that much, but only that much.
kbd512 wrote:A few weeks back you said you weren't coming to the US as long as Donald Trump was POTUS. Just curious, but what caused you to change your mind?
I don't remember posting that, but that is a point. The US appears unstable right now. I would like to set politics aside, focus on a job with a commercial company. And would like to focus on technical stuff dealing with space. But I haven't been allowed to do that. I have a small home business repairing computers but so close to unemployed that effectively I am. Another alternative is to enter politics. I had won the nomination in my electoral district for the federal election, for the party that is currently government of Canada. I had become president of the riding association, and had a seat on the executive for the provincial association for the federal party. I got manoeuvred out by individuals not in my electoral district.
My Cousin likewise threatened to move to Canada if Trump got elected. The Democratic Political Machine has created a lot of prejudice against Donald Trump, they created a Nazi-like caricature of him, they convinced a lot of people that it was going to be the "Fourth Reich" if Trump got elected! What we see now is the results of that action. Democrats have gone crazy because they didn't get their way, so they are doing everything that can to political obstruct Donald Trump, even to the point of hurting their own constituents! Lets take Chuck Schumer for instance, he is complaining about Trump wanting to cut Homeland Security money for New York City, but is he willing to make a deal with Donald Trump to get that money back? He is the head of the Democratic minority in the Senate after all, if he would call off his dogs that are attacking Donald Trump on everything, (Those in Congress and in the Media) then Trump very well might consider restoring the money for Homeland security, he is known to be a dealmaker after all! Chuck Schumer doesn't seem to want to do that however, he would rather play spoiler to the Trump Administration and his own constituents in New York State are going to suffer because of that!
I had also been elected president of the provincial constituency association, and the leader of the provincial party asked me to stand as a candidate for the provincial election. I said no because I wanted to run federally.
Curious that you wanted to start at the top, at the Federal Level rather than rising up through the local level as most politicians do. Trump started at the top, but of course he rose up through the world of business first, those are his credentials! I don't actually think he bought the Presidency with his money, but he did put his financial success on his resume!
But individuals in the federal party in this province but no in my electoral district have actively fought against me. And with the new leader, the federal party has moved in a direction I do not agree with. Perhaps I should run provincially. There's a new leader of the provincial party; key party members couldn't forgive the leader for failing to increase the number of elected members for our party. The new leader got a couple more members elected, but not enough. Those same powerful party individuals forced the new leader to resign as well. She's currently serving as interim leader until they find a new one. Who will it be? What will the provincial party become?
kbd512 wrote:Sorry to hear about your cat.
#143 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-23 08:08:16
I believe there is a lesson to be learned here which can be applied to us, since the culture of our country is related to theirs. There is a phenomenon that I call "White Guilt" the British had their Empire in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and they feel like they hae to make amends for all the injustices wrought by that Empire, but it seems to me that the British Empire also did a lot of good, which they are discounting, and not all evil in the World stems from past white exploitation of other races. Whatever made that bearded Asian go crazy and run people over in his SUV and stab that police officer, was not because of something white people had done to him, it was not slavery or Imperial Exploitation or the Opium trade in the 19th century, those are just excuses. I am trying to be helpful. the Brits aren't doing me any favors by letting themselves be vulnerable to terrorists or by fighting them, I just figure we have something in more common with the British People than with Middle eastern fanaticism. There are parts of this World that are just sick, and those people did it to themselves, we are not responsible for the way they are.
#144 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-22 22:24:58
To be honest, I don't think we voted for Brexit because we were worried about terrorism. It was more of a sovereignty issue, as well as problems surrounding uncontrolled immigration.
You mean psychos coming in from a sick part of the World, that is the Middle East, that other Europeans felt sorry for because they were such underdogs! Do you think Londoners regretted electing a Muslim as Mayor? Having a Muslim mayor didn't make them immune to terrorism. I wonder why Princess Diana wanted to date a Muslim? I don't think she would have looked good in a veil or a burka. Trump wanted to date her, but she preferred the Muslim, too bad!
#145 Re: Martian Politics and Economy » Mapping a way forward » 2017-03-22 11:23:47
Tom Kalbfus wrote:Who cares whether Mars is free of Earth's domination or not? There aren't any Martian residents to state an opinion on the matter, for all we know they might be fine with it!
Very true. Who are we to speak for them. The trouble would be if they are not fine with it. Getting free of 'domination' might involve a lengthy process of dispute, activism, political struggle, even armed struggle. That's great if we want to re-live Kim Stanley Robinson's novels, but not great for the people who have to live through it.
Isn't it better that Mars be free? As has been often stated in this thread & elsewhere, if there's even one Earth-based country, company or group with sovereignty or control over a patch of Mars or the settlers there, soon there could be many, then that leads pretty surely to conflicting claims and division. Much harder to reverse that and unite Mars later.
Is this a clash of visions? Some want Mars to continue what we do on Earth - making money, profits for the shareholders back home, being the best & strongest; others want to start again & try for something better.
The other possibility is "War of the Worlds" where the Martians seek to invade Earth, independence is a double-edged sword. An independent Mars is not necessarily a free Mars, the ruler of Mars might desire more territory and want to conquer Earth.
#146 Re: Martian Politics and Economy » Mapping a way forward » 2017-03-22 10:25:43
Who cares whether Mars is free of Earth's domination or not? There aren't any Martian residents to state an opinion on the matter, for all we know they might be fine with it!
#147 Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Does Enceladus have a primordial black hole in its center? » 2017-03-22 10:20:58
- Tom Kalbfus
- Replies: 4
Why is Enceladus warmer than it should be? One possible answer is that it may have captured a primordial microscopic black hole that was created during the Big Bang. Since the black hole is very tiny, it is just large enough to radiate enough energy due to Hawking radiation as it takes in from infalling matter from Enceladus itself, thus Enceladus and the black hole are converting a small portion of itself to energy with 100% efficiency, and all that waste heat is going to heat up the surrounding moon to a temperature that is warmer than it should be. We don't know exactly when this black hole was captured, if that was the case. It could be that the black hole is slowly getting larger as time passes and it will turn Enceladus into a mini sun for a time, before that satellite gets swallowed by that black hole at its core.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/tiger- … ing-bright
I think I mentioned earlier for terraforming about making Enceladus into an artificial Sun for terraforming Saturn. I think though it would take a long time for the black hole to grow large enough to turn Enceladus into an artificial Sun if that is the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus
#148 Re: Not So Free Chat » When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics. » 2017-03-22 09:50:14
We would basically need to build artificial mountains to ring this lake, What is the time scale for the ice caps completely melting? Some people are predicting a century. In a century, I am predicting that we will build sophisticated robots that are capable of building copies of themselves and moving the amount of Earth required to build these artificial mountain ranges. I believe there is enough dirt and rock in Antarctica to accomplish this. Since the ice sheets average about a mile high, that is how high this earthen dam would have to be to contain the melt water. Either way it would be a global effort, one effort would require the cooperation of every single nation on Earth in regulating the carbon emissions which contribute to the greenhouse effect, the other thing wouldn't be. If the United States were to do this alone, I would say it should be allowed to add the remaining dry land of Western Antarctica and the Transantarctic Mountains and the other artificial mountain ranges and the coastlands of Antarctica to its territory, after all if it is making this enormous investment in Antarctica for the benefit of the rest of the World, it should get the Continent of Antarctica, I think that is a fair payment for the expense in doing this! Just look at that map, its still a lot of land even after sacrificing most of East Antarctica to build this dam. Would it be worth the investment if the rest of the World were to see the United States as doing a service and preventing many nations from getting flooded by rising ocean levels?
The "ringlands" are quite a bit of territory and the coastline would be preserved!, and he water collected in the reservoir can be used to irrigate the dry regions of the world through a global pipeline system, that water would evaporate and make its way back to the south pole where it would precipitate and be recycled.
This is much as Percival Lowell thought was going on the surface of Mars when he thought he saw canals through his telescope. I don't know much about the finer points of global climate regulation, but it we use brute force techniques we don't have to worry about climate models, we can fight desertification directly through irrigation rather than by attempting to make it rain. We could in fact make the Australian Outback, one of the driest places on Earth bloom with vegetation. the mountains of Antarctica when all is said and done would still make fantastic ski resorts, there will be some ice and snow left for this.
#149 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-22 09:36:57
Curious, while I was posting my last message, it appears there was something going on outside the Parliament building in London, UK. Some guy in an SUV started driving on the sidewalks, running over people, he was shot at by armed police, he crashed into the railings outside of the Parliament building, got out side his car, and attempted to stab the police with a knife and was shot dead. Given this information, I am predicting that this person was a Muslim, after all, who else would he be? No sane person would do a thing like this, it could only be a Muslim, or someone who was truly psychotic! What is your prediction? Are you beginning to understand the Brexit vote now?
#150 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2017-03-22 08:30:40
Tom Kalbfus wrote:if we kill enough of them, they will get the message that killing Americans is a bad idea!
You realize they have the same idea. You kill them, they kill you. When does the cycle stop?
When Bill Clinton was president, the cycle with al-Qaeda escalated until it became 9/11. ISIS hasn't attacked the US on American soil...yet. Do you want to push them until they do?
Look. The US supported general Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Look how well that turned out. The US supported Osama bin Laden against Soviets in Afghanistan. Again, didn't that work? Iran elected a Prime Minister in 1951, had a modern liberal democracy. An Anglo-American coup in 1953 overthrew that government, installed the Shaw who was corrupt. This isn't sounding good, is it?
Now there's ISIS. Bad guys. The only reason they have any chance is the ongoing civil war in Syria. The fight between Syrian army and rebels ties up all their resources. If that wasn't ongoing, they Syrian army would have long ago gotten rid of ISIS. And you realize ISIS gets most of their weapons by intercepting weapons drops by the US intended for rebels.
Their objective is to get us to surrender, convert to Islam and be conquered by them, you are forgetting we are a superpower, have nuclear weapons and the largest economy on Earth, and they are in the Third World with third world poverty and a lot of fanaticism. I do think that he chances of our crushing them are a lot greater than their chances of crushing us. What stops us is people like you who are always sympathizing with the underdog, they are in an extremely disadvantage position relative to us, and you think that is unfair, that they should have as equal a chance of destroying us as we have of destroying them. What this accomplishes is prolonging the war with them, they can't defeat us, and because of people like you, we keep pulling our punches and are not defeating them. Like World War II, they need to be defeated quickly with whatever it takes, so the war can end, that is the most merciful thing we can do, we need to kill these "rabid dogs!" Put them out of misery so we can get on with peace and prosperity, and of course colonizing space!