New Mars Forums

Giant space ring?  Bah.   

With oil production about to peak in the next few years and decline in the next few decades, we probably won't even need the Kyoto Protocol, much less this thing.  No petroleum = No carbon source = no carbon dioxide.

Mother nature is about to step in and take care of global warming for us.  If we can't play responsibly with our oil supply, she'll just take it away, and if we don't have enough sense to develop other power sources instead, that'll just be too bad.

We would do much better to worry about where our next tank of petrol is coming from than where our space ring is going.  The world needs to start conserving fuels right now.

The cracking I mentioned is even more visible in this microimager photo taken nearby.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … icroImager Photo from Sol 505

Oddly, it seems restricted to the bright area around the sunken pebbles. 

Those bright areas are not water ice, though.  If they were, they would probably glisten.

Dook, you wrote:

and

I think that the first is a charming set of religious opinions.   :;):

As for the second, my answer is "yes", or I wouldn't waste time doing it.  I only take issue with those who believe that making new gadgets is all we're here to do.

Cindy, you wrote:

I'm fortunate enough to know that's not true.  However, there are an awful lot of little christian soldiers out there who believe that dehumanizing the enemy makes them better fighters.

Several thousand years of military history assures me they're correct.    What that has to do with altruism, compassion and charity, though, I have no idea.

Dick, you wrote:

and there was never a truer word spoken.  But you also wrote:

I wasn't aware that volunteerism had been given enough of a chance - or that there were even enough steps involved - to be able to make that statement.

So true. 

I often find that people who've never actually studied science before really have little idea of the true grandeur of the universe.  Even when dealing with apparently stochastic phenomena, the order of it all is a revelation.  Personally, not being an agnostic, I find that the grandeur of the universe tends to strengthen my faith. 

However, having studied physics and other sciences in depth, I know that the methods that allow us to see even these tiny hints of our universe's true nature do not themselves inherently imply or deny a creator diety.  If physics equations that apply equally throughout the universe make no distinction between which way is up or the direction time is flowing at the moment, how can they distinguish between the presence or absence of a God? 

Similarly, game theory provides strong indications that simple rules like "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "Give a small fraction of your income to charity," "Forgive those who trespass against you," etc., are actually strategically advantageous tactics for daily life.  At the same time, it also reveals that Blaise Pascal's original return matrix arguments concerning the advantage of a belief in God are technically incomplete.  Game theory agrees that Jesus did happen to be right once in a while, but tells no more about his true nature than physics does.

And don't even get me started on using "Intelligent Design" models of evolution to evangelize for religion.    :sleep:  It doesn't matter if chromosome 16 turns out to be a UPC bar code.  It conveys nothing about God.

Science always allows for an alternative without devine intervention.  That is its nature - the pursuit of knowledge, not faith.  So, what about Dook's clearly religious statement about the uselessness of materialism? 

Well, I suggest an exercise in faith.

Considering the words of Jesus apart from the concept of God (not technically possible, but if you're already apostate then what's the harm in a little heretical modalism?   :;): ), we know that some of the behaviors he advocated are useful tactics even though they are apparently sacrificial in the short term.  The proof of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" as a viable tactic waited two thousand years for the mathematical tools to handle non-zero sum return matrices.  (The mathematics of the famous "Tit-for-Tat" proof was quite a breakthrough in modern mathematics.)  Why not others as well that game theory simply hasn't caught up with yet?   Surely "Beware of greed, for a man's life consists not in the abundance of things he possesses" could be equally valid. 

So, why not try it in the field and see if it works?  Run on out there and live the words of Jesus.  True, it could backfire on you.  Some biblical sayings can bring you to grief.  (For example, I can't recommend "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live" as a life tactic.  That's nothing but trouble.)  But if you don't have enough faith (courage? curiosity? poverty?) to try it, then you'll have to sit around and wait on the mathematical proof.  That could take another two thousand years, in which time you could end up buying a lot of useless gadgets.

Marooning, exile, or hanging come to mind.  Or, if we're really mad at the guy, we can transfer him back and forth between Mars and Earth a few times, repeatedly whipping his command out from under him like a rug. 

That ought to handle it.   :;):

They launch tomorrow!  How exciting.   

All right, then, I'll change my vote.

I still say that no amount of past expenses on a research project automatically justifies future expenses on the same project.  That won't change.

However, the whole reason that $2.8 billion in research funding could be let go without a qualm is the hope of hitting on another scheme that will work.  Unless you are a psychic who can predict the result of a experiments that have never been run, cancelling research projects before results become available is just bad policy.  Use of that threat by the US Congress to manipulate another bill is just wrong, both morally and economically.

There's no return from projects that pan out if none are ever allowed to pan out.

I would disagree.  The bulk of funded research doesn't reveal anything of immediate use, yet funding research still gives a net return because the few projects that do pan out tend to be of sufficient economic value to cover the loss for all the rest.

$2.8 billion is a lot of expense for a set of failed projects, but it will be made up elsewhere.

I don't trust this partitioning idea. 

Problems include, but are not limited to:

In return for some help we got from them, we made assurances to Turkey that we wouldn't deliberately do this.  As far as tactics on the ground go, that's a non-issue - we don't need the Turks anymore.  But it would be harmful for our international negotiations in general, even so.

The Iraqis already have a new government, one which we have declared sovereign and has its own army.  If we break our word to them as well, will we then need to conquer Iraq a second time?  (Snubbing Turkey would be nothing compared to that.)

Then there's the Insurgency.  Or, I should say, the various insurgencies.  They seem to have devolved into a lot of infighting lately.  Their motivations may be too diverse to simply "give them what they want", and attempts to do so might reunify the unsatisfied remnants.  That's not dramatically different from the situation today, but don't expect partitioning to improve anything there. 

Then, there's the people and the humanitarian catastrophe we'd be abandoning, the oil we'd never get, the boost a weak Iraq would give to Iran, the boost our retreat would give to Al Qaeda, etc, etc.

No, the opportunity to partition Iraq has come and gone.  We've made too many promises, and gone too far down the road to reconstruction to simply change direction now.

My advice?

The Romans had it right.  Age quod agis.  If you're going to rebuild Iraq, rebuild Iraq.

Do you want to know a really sad thing?  I had already clicked three links before I realized that I was reading a satire.     Sometimes its hard to tell...

Oh, BTW, before anybody asks, I did write "solar thermal powerplants can operate at night".  Solar thermal powerplants need the heat, not the light.  Anything that will release heat back to the generator will keep it running at night. 

A ton of molten lithium can soak up enough heat during the day to keep a kilowatt generator going for hours after dark.

Anyone who doesn't understand the motivation behind the minutemen simply needs to go home, look out their front window, and imagine watching a tresspasser walking across their front yard.  Keep imagining it, every day.

With the exception of the more dangerous passages (those ones in the news, with people dying in the desert), most everybody making an illegal crossing has to travel across land owned by someone in the US.  Usually the owner lives on the parcel in question, in a nice house with food, water, and tempting valuables.  Desperate mexicans are no more likely to follow the law than desperate americans.  If your place is a sufficiently popular crossing, and sufficiently isolated, eventually you will be burgled. 

Statistically, the incidence of burglary related to illegal immigration is so low as to be nearly negligible.  Less than one in a thousand illegal immigrants enters this country with the intent of committing a felony.  But if you have a thousand tresspassers a year walking across your front lawn, eventually you are bound to encounter one who doesn't just keep walking.