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Trebuchet was conflicted.
On the one hand, he had no love for bunnies. On the other hand, he wasn't the type to pass up the opportunity to make a quick buck. So he probably had the only bar on Mars - heck, the only bar in the solar system - where an audio book recording of "Watership Down" was playing, along with carrot cake, rabbit stew, and easter eggs to go with a daylong Happy Hour.
Yes, things were all right in the TempleBar, from the happy colonists listening to the recording to the cultists of Mad Lord Vlork sacrificing rabbits in the back.
I hereby derail the budding troll-fest by noting that the "brave insurgents" in Iraq have taken an http://cnn.worldnews.printthis.clickabi … 006]action figure hostage.
trying to comfortably apply this to the male genitalia could be a design nightmare.
The codpiece returneth.
You could fill the suit with some sort of liquid instead of a gas; liquids don't have the problem of variable volume which causes normal gas-pressurized suits to balloon. Another solution would be to build the pressure layer out of wire and spandex like a body-sized Wonderbra to get all the curves right. Or something like that.
The Marines have something like this as well. It's not a new concept, the military has been thinking along those lines for at least 10 years or so.
The last time a president was elected for a 2nd term with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress was 1928.
In 1929 . . . .
Because, as we all know, one event establishes a pattern. Right? Right! The flaws with that 'reasoning' are such that you should go play in the sandbox with Errorist until you wise up. Yeesh. You might as well blame something on a particular alignment of the stars.
It will not be too far in the future where a designer in his lab will download to an almost purely automated factory the product to be created and it can be made almost on site or very nearby so saving expensive transport costs.
That day is arriving faster than you think. In fact, it's already arrived to a degree with current rapid prototyping devices - it's just mass production that's slow and requires a massive factory and an army of workers.
Here would be my big prediction: The music industry is complaining about people pirating music right now. I predict that in ten years, Nike will start complaining about people pirating *shoes*. And in thirty years, General Motors will be filing lawsuits against people pirating whole cars.
To put it bluntly, the world has not changed so much as it has reverted to a pre-WWII system of pure balance of power considerations. Fascism and Communism had all sorts of mental baggage demanding epic struggles between ideologically opposed factions. With both pretty much dead in the water, things will happen on an ad-hoc basis for the foreseeable future. The maverick posture of the United States over the past few years is not irrational, short sighted thinking but the first nation ditching the remnants of the Cold War system. There is no great ideological enemy to be organized against. The world situation is unstable and unpredictable, and technologies in the offing that could change the rules of the game entirely. And the possibilities of alignments between nations is very wide; it is not implausible to think up scenarios where any of the major players are aligned with any of the other major players. It's foolish, at this point, to tie yourself strongly to any one nation or set of nations. And that is exactly the apparent conclusion reached by *all* the major players. The Russians and Chinese have occasionally obliquely sounded out Washington to see if the US was interested in a partial alignment of interests. The Japanese have made noise about maybe building nukes. The Brazilians have bobbed all over the place, and India frets about Pakistan and sees who's the best ally available at the moment, and so forth. The field is wide open.
However, for the reasons I listed in my previous post - industrial, research, and military muscle - the US is in the driver's seat for the foreseeable future.
Ignoring Martian Republic's nonsense, I feel that closer relations with India are probably inevitable, barring some catastrophe; India has its own terrorist problems, worries about China, and views Bush and the Republicans as their favored US administration for reasons of trade. What Washington should do is go ahead and offer military equipment and the like to India, attempting to create a Japan-Taiwan-Australia-India chain of friendly nations. This not only is good geopolitics with regards to China, but also with the war on international terrorism, which is a problem in SE Asia as well as the Middle East.
As far as Africa goes, the US and EU have actually been influence-peddling and otherwise been involved in sub-Saharan Africa. IMHO, those nations can't be failures forever, so it's likely that someone's efforts will pay off, although it's probably a crap shoot to say which nation will make significant improvements first. The French have been the primary EU nation involved in that, and they have been ham-handed enough to make several nations lean towards the US without any particular action on Bush's part, so the US might have slightly better odds on that roulette wheel. The primary reason Africa hasn't popped up on anyone's radar is because the EU and US aren't getting in diplomatic pissing matches over the area at the moment.
In terms of overall power, the US is in the lead and is likely to hold its current relative strength during our lifetimes, as the US has unmatched R&D, industrial, and military muscle matched with a very big (3rd most populous in world) population. (An additional 'wild card' factor - a distinct unconcern about genetic engineering, nanotech, etc, compared to Europe - means that the US has an element of complete unpredictability to it, as well; it's possible that in the next 50 years, the US might rewrite the rulebook. China is mucking around with nano as well, and has a lesser unpredictable-results factor. The EU, Japan, and other nations seem to be playing it cautiously in that regard). China will pick up power at the EU and Japan's relative expense; Russia and Brazil will probably stay more or less the same; India will gain some relative advantage. The end result is very nice from the perspective of worrying about large-scale warfare, with the Himalayas seperating two of the three main contenders, and the US on the other side of the world. Proxy warfare would be the rule, especially if the US drops its Will Rodgers diplomacy (Will Rogers: "Diplomacy is saying 'Nice doggy' until you find a rock") with regards to Pakistan.
Generally speaking, forcing option A is a not so secret goal of the Republican party; a larger and larger portion of the federal government is earmarked for various social programs, and since raising taxes IS unpopular as hell... It's Machiavellian and a completely unfair, manipulative stance, but hey, fair fights are for suckers, so I approve. I pay my own health insurance and save my own retirement money, mostly because I don't trust government to provide either and have zero intention of trusting them with such things.
We could implement B afterwards or at the same time if neccessary to fix whatever budgetary mess results. Since the US doesn't have a GNP-to-debt ratio as whacked as most industrialized countries, I feel we wouldn't need much taxation - if any - to fix things after such an enforced diet.
C actually is already used a lot; there are many things which the government owns - either physically, like land, or intellecutally, like radio airwaves. I suppose that soaking companies for logging rights on federal land, radio frequency use, and oil drilling rights would be more politically acceptable, as the notion of charging such companies more will play well on the left and corporations will simply hand the extra cost to the consumer. Nobody loses, at least, nobody politically active, which is functionally the same thing from Congress's standpoint.
::feeling cynical tonight::
And to think, it's 50 degrees (F) here and Floridians are wearing parkas and cranking up the heat like the state was suddenly relocated to Antarctica or something.
Coldness is relative.
I am organizing a counter-revolution against Martian Republic. There isn't enough room for the two of us on Mars... and we ain't even there yet. ^_^
I'm against most revolutions.
Errorist, less net warming occurs if the UV hits ice and reflects than if it's absorbed by the ozone layer. Ice is shiny, you might have noticed....
Damn site is down.
Hey, if there's oil on Mars, that's very useful *on Mars*. Plastics, synthetic rubber, tar for making macadam roads...
Actually, the neutron star *would* burst into a giant spray of free neutrons. Big clumps of neutrons are unstable. It should happen in a reasonably quick period, even given the huge speed the fragment would have to have in order to break free of the neutron star's immense gravitational field. The neutrons themselves would later decay into protons and electrons... which seems to violate the laws of conservation of thermodynamics, actually, as the star was originally just hydrogen (free protons and electrons), but I suppose that the total entropy of the system was increased by whatever impact/explosion/whatever ripped loose the neutron star material.
Errorist, why do you always start weird, dumb topics? Honestly, you've been spamming the board with this kind of stuff for a month or two...
When neutron stars collide, they turn into a black hole and convert any leftover mass into energy. So you don't have the problem of fragments of neutron star material - which, freed of the overpowering gravity of the neutron star, would simply vaporize into a hail of free-flying neutrons - anyways, although the tremendous gamma- and x-ray explosion from the merging neutron stars would be messy enough on its own.
Besides, even if such mini-neutron star chunks could exist, worrying about it would be completely pointless. Trying to stop something that massive, dense, and presumably fast moving would be like trying to stop a speeding freight train by hitting a golf ball at it. Not going to happen. Actually, there's a good chance that if something that dense, small, and fast hit the earth, it wouldn't even really slow down and would shoot through the earth like a bullet through a cardboard box. Might be less destructive than a less massive, but much bigger in volume impactor.
The seeds don't weigh much. You *grow* your own tree, and let it continue to grow over the next few years. Eventually, you grow a new one and use the other for the wood (very valuable) and pine tar (for martian baseball bats... and probably a hundred better uses)
- Deciding to take time off from the tiring work of erasing the state of Florida, the hurricanes decide to pester North Carolina instead.
- The media will continue to complain about the horrible quagmire in Iraq throughout the year, even after the US forces leave in September to go beat up Iran.
- A nation in Africa will collapse into civil war and chaos. The UN will be appalled and do nothing constructive about it.
- Speaking of the UN, Kofi Annan will be removed. A brief canidacy for Vaclav Havel will develop, however, some third world guy you never heard of before will get the job.
- His network of terrorists having been shredded by the US military for years, Osama Bin Laden will stop wasting his money on destroying the US economy and killing Americans via sponsoring international terrorism. Instead, Osama Bin Laden will set up a corporation selling cigarettes and fast food.
- His attempt to influence Ukrainian politics having failed, Putin will turn his sights on Kazakhstan instead.
- In a stunner, the Philadelphia Eagles lose the NFC title game... again. The winner gets the honor of being splattered by the Patriots.
Holidays on Mars (or elsewhere) is an interesting problem I was thinking about before. It gets much more messy if you consider that we probably won't stop at Mars in the long run... oh well.
I suppose that, given the transit times between planets, multiple calendars will be used. However, that's really a discussion for a different thread.
My proposal is as follows: whatever the Martian calendar is, "rewind" the calendar back 2004 earth years and see what Martian day December 25th of year 1 was. Then just use that day as "Martian Christmas", once every Martian year. Same with other anniversaries. Actually, I'd zero (or rather, since we never had a 'year zero' on earth, 'one') all years on all worlds to the same standard, with the first day of the first year corresponding to January 1, 1 AD
Nah, http://www.radshield.com/]Demron cloaks will probably be the fashion item of choice, complete with cowl.
Hmm, very, very interesting. I didn't know about the mountains.
Now we should see if there are black mountains on the white side of the moon, on the equator (or aligned to the same longitude or something similarly suspect), when Cassini takes a picture of that part of the moon. It's certainly suspicious.
We should figure out how to put people in a hibernation-like state for a few months and ship 'em like so much cordwood.
I figure the hibernation research will get a boost because one of the enzymes involved appears to cause the body to preferentially burn body fat. That has applications for the holy grail of consumer pharmeceuticals, the Lazy Bastard Diet Pill, so at least part of the process will likely attract funding no matter whether NASA cares about it or not.
If you can simply stick people in casket-like pods and let them take a nap for a few months, colonizing Mars suddenly becomes much simpler. People would use a lot less space, food, water, and air while having a few months of snoozetime....
I'd rather stab myself with a spork.
I'm quite aware of that, you know...
EDIT: Ahh, looking way back reveals why you'd put that apparent non sequitur in there. Errorist mentioned hydrogen and helium ''defying gravity' way back where. I was not, as a look at my post should make abundantly clear. Hydrogen and helium are merely much more likely to be booted into space by a random collision than other gases, because of their light weight (as you and I know and Errorist didn't). Otherwise, a single hydrogen atom which has not achieved escape velocity will come back to earth, same as anything else, in the absence of any other forces working on it.