New Mars Forums

I agree.
    It has such depth and colour - truly beautiful!  :up:   

Dicktice:-

    Yes ... a good idea!
    Kinda like a 'spell checker' but actually an 'acronym cracker'.   :up:   

Cindy:-

    Well, at least we can outrun the bloodthirsty bas****s, or hit 'em with a piece of wood.
    But did you notice that a grizzly bear is much faster on foot than the average human?!  And I've heard you shouldn't shoot 'em, either ... it just makes 'em mad!!   

Grypd:-

    I've never heard of this method of determining a ship's speed before - very interesting.
    But, I assume from the description given by Grypd, that the 'buoy and rope' method would only give the ship's speed relative to the body of water in which it sailed and not relative to the sea-bottom. In other words, the speed of the ocean current at the point of measurement would become a systematic error in the calculations.
    Is this the case, and would such an error (in concert with the obvious errors involved in poor time-keeping, of course) help to explain the comparative inaccuracy of the sea charts of the day?

    In any event, I'm still amazed at the ingenuity and the courage of the mariners of those times.The chances of coming home alive must have seemed alarmingly poor with the available technology and yet they braved the odds undaunted.
    Perhaps one day, when space travel becomes more routine, we'll regard the exploits of the Apollo lunar astronauts with the same wonder and awe. In my opinion, they were the most extraordinarily gutsy and inspiring individuals of my youth and it's still hard to find words adequate to express my admiration for them. 

I think the 'White Mars' hypothesis was always a rather exotic and contrived one, even though proposed by a fellow Australian, Dr. Nick Hoffman!
    Since it was first being touted back in 2000, a great deal of evidence has emerged in favour of water as the agent which has produced the ubiquitous fluvial features on Mars.

    While not impossible, I think it very unlikely that the dying 'White Mars' hypothesis will stage a miraculous death-bed recovery at this stage!  :;):

    The Mars Express ground-penetrating radar, due to be deployed in May, should finally tell us one way or the other, assuming all goes well. Let's wait and see. 

Cindy:-

    The last I heard, yes, that's about right. I feel like we should be doing more but it's not my call.

An Iraqi general, eh?!
    It just goes to show that the anti-democratic forces are still achieving their goals in Iraq, despite the best efforts of the Coalition.
    The same applies also in the case of the Italian journalist's entourage, of course.
    Tragic.   :bars:

    What's even more depressing is the prospect of Italy withdrawing their 3000 troops in the next 6 months or so. It looks like the Italians are about to make the same mistake the Spanish people made - abandoning the brave Iraqi people just as they're finding their feet.
    As we've all agreed, whatever one might think about the wisdom or otherwise of liberating Iraq, now is not the time to cut and run.

    On a happier note, I'm pleased to report Australia is sending an extra 450 troops to Iraq soon, to help replace the 1400 Dutch soldiers recently withdrawn. (Such a pity the Dutch, too, have decided to quit at this critical time for the Middle East.)
                                                        ???

Hmmm.
    I certainly don't want to get involved in another pointless and acrimonious exchange about world politics but might I be permitted a comment or two regarding the newspaper article I quoted?
    My view, for what it's worth, is that Cindy's question could have been tackled more diplomatically and without uncalled-for reference to 'trolling, lies, intimidation, bullying, childishness .. and Kool-Aid'!

    Chirac is a weasel, agreed, and I think asking why he opposed the liberation of Iraq so strongly is a valid question, even if it is phrased as "Why does Chirac prefer Hussein to Bush?" I'm not sure I would have posed the question in quite that way, myself, but I think its meaning is no less clear for all that.
    And, eventually, it seems Bill answered that question, despite his somewhat theatrical protestations about its structure. He said Chirac is amoral and "would sell out Hussein in an instant IF it suited his purposes". In other words, Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war was much more likely to be born of expedience and greed than any higher motivation.

    I believe that statement did indeed answer Cindy's question - and I believe it could have done so much earlier in the piece, too, without all the unnecessary put-downs.
                                                        ???

Happy Birthday, ERRORIST!

    I confess there have been times when your persistence with fairly 'out there' concepts has been a strain on my sanity, but then I'm not always that easy to get along with, myself 

    Have a thumping good time and Many Happy Returns! 

Cyclone Ingrid became a Category 5 again over the Gulf, skirted the coastline of the Northern Territory, heading west, and 'eased'(! ) to a Category 3. It destroyed a few settlements along the way, narrowly missed Darwin, and is heading west to the Kimberleys (of Western Australia) as a Category 4.
    Cairns caught the side-effects of Ingrid, in terms of rainfall. In the 48 hours up to 9am Sunday morning, we got 334 millimetres (~13 inches) of rain. And we've had maybe another 120 millimetres (~4.5 inches) since then.
    Life in the tropics! 

[There've been posts added since I started this one, including Dook's impassioned plea on behalf of the genetically afflicted, but I'll post this anyway. Please forgive any resulting disjointedness resulting from my tardiness in responding.]

CC:-

    Yes, it's the Pandora's Box aspect that worries a lot of us, I think.

    And, while I understand Dook's points to some extent, his insistence on concentrating solely on the very earliest phase of human life, when it's relatively easy to dismiss it as 'just a cell' or a group of cells, is conveniently skirting around the problem. I agree with Dook that this discussion isn't primarily about abortion, it's about stem-cell research, but I think it's logically impossible to separate the two because they deal with precisely the same problem.

    I think it's very dangerous to try to ignore the fact that there's no obvious borderline between Dook's 'just a cell' and a full-term, healthy human baby. An uninterrupted continuum of steady development connects those two phases of pre-birth human life - no sensible or discernible lines divide that continuum into segments. In fact, Dook inadvertently strengthens this argument by taking my earlier point to the next level:-
    'Why not continue your elaboration and say "What about an 8 year old child?"'
    Exactly!
    There is no credible dividing line that we know of between the newly fertilized human egg and the 8-year-old child. Any attempt by us to create one is just that, a creation of the human mind based on expediency. And there's the rub. As CC indirectly alluded to, once you get comfortable drawing purely arbitrary and convenient lines in the sand as to when a human is or isn't a human, it's a relatively short trip to the gas chambers.

    I agree with Trebuchet's impeccable logic, too. Thanks, Treb!

    And Dook, your description of the suffering of so many people in this world, especially the children, can hardly fail to move us all to heartfelt pity. Believe me, I do feel the pain.
However, I'm hoping that stem-cell research which doesn't rely on 'killing Peter to save Paul' will generate all the benefits we're looking for without compromising our humanity. 

Dook:-

    You're right, of course, Dook.
    A fertilized egg is hardly a sentient being by any stretch of the imagination. And a 4-week-old embryo can't think either. And I don't suppose an 8-week-old foetus is doing much contemplating, come to that.
    What about a 16-week or 24-week foetus?
    A 30-week foetus?
    A 39-week foetus?
    A 1-day-old baby or a 1-week-old baby?
    Any coherent thoughts or logical communication?
    Nope.

    Who decides when it has human rights and at what stage do we draw the line?
    What if it's your call, Dook? Suppose you decide a 16-week-old foetus (112 days) is a human and can't be deliberately destroyed. A pregnant woman comes to you at 111 days and you destroy the foetus but, if she'd come to you the day after, the foetus is a human and you can't kill it?
    Why not set the line at 30 weeks (210 days) and proceed to kill the foetus at 209 days?

    Or why not decide you can kill a baby up until the day it can smile, or say 'Momma', or sit up on its own ...

    It's just too arbitrary where you draw the line, in my opinion, and therefore I think we should resort to the one indisputable point at which all the information, at least, is there to make a human - the point of conception. I know this is inconvenient for some stem-cell researchers, and for some women anxious to avoid pregnancy, but then convenience isn't the point here .. or is it?