New Mars Forums

Correction.
    In my post about the 'asparagus stems', I compared them to the 'crinoid' fossil discovered last year. Unfortunately, I attributed that discovery to Spirit during its Sol 33 'microscopic' investigations.
    In fact, the 'crinoid' was found by Opportunity in the course of its Sol 34 activities.

    I've found the full picture of that 'crinoid', with blueberries nearby for size-comparison, and I thought I'd paste it here as part of this correction:-

    Still looks suspiciously like biological remains to me - the cylindrical segments neatly arranged, the bifurcating segment on top ...
    Hmmm.  ???    :;):

I just noticed a couple of interesting 'microscopic' pictures from Spirit.

    The first is from Sol 376:-

    It was the light-coloured object in the top half of the picture which caught my eye. It looks a little like a fossilized clump of asparagus stems to me!
    I know crystals can grow into shapes remarkably like biological forms, so we can't possibly know what this thing really is unless we send people there to pick it up and examine it. But I thought you might like to see it, if you haven't already.   

    This 'microscopic' shot was taken on Sol 386:-

    At first glance, I thought for a moment that the "ceiling rose" near the middle of the picture looked like a fossilized plant or coral, or something along those lines.
    Almost immediately, though, I realized it's just an artifact of Spirit's rotary brush.
    But it had me going there for a second!!      

    Just going back to the first photo - does anyone have any thoughts about the "asparagus stems"?  While you think it over, put it in the context of the infamous "fossilized crinoid" which Spirit found, then RATted, early in its mission.
    The "crinoid" and the "asparagus", considered individually, are easier to dismiss than if you consider them together. Not that I'm suggesting we can't simply dismiss both as no more than interesting curiosities, of course ... because we certainly can and, evidently, we already have!

    But these things do make me think when I see them, and I still wonder sometimes whether we could be cheerfully rolling past whole fossil beds on Mars without even realizing it. The potential irony of it is almost unbearable to contemplate, isn't it?!    :bars:

Awww, Clark.
    Who was it said you're obnoxious and offensive?   :laugh:

Wait a minute!
    Now Saturn's blue?!   ???

    For years they've been telling us it's pastel pinky-yellowy- orangey-beige. Now it's blue!
                                                       

Your undiminished disdain for my opinions and interpretations of world events is noted, Bill. (And I'm fine with that.)
    One thing I do wish, though, is that Clinton had launched the liberation of Iraq, instead of Bush. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that that would have made everything all right and we could get on with things, without all this tiresome spite.
    You see, Bill, President Bush isn't my "Precious Leader". I'm not an American. None of what I think about the liberation of Iraq depends on any personal preference for who does the liberating; I support the concept itself and I've always believed it was worth the effort.

    Just for the record, I never said: "Bush will be noted by history as an exceptional leader". He hasn't done enough yet to warrant that kind of prediction. ('Many a slip twixt cup and lip', and all that!  )
    I said things like: "It looks increasingly likely to me that President Bush .. "
    And: " We could be seeing another American Presidential legend in the making. Stranger things have happened."
    I believe it was your own feelings about your own President that caused you to react so strongly. All I'm doing is calling it the way I see it, from the outside looking in.
    So sue me! 

    I think you're too close to the problem, Bill. Stand back a little and try to see it other than through the eyes of a devout Democrat. The world is actually a little bigger than America's Senate and Congress - trust me!

    Catholic, huh?  How do you manage .. coping with two religions?   

   [P.S. Don't bother telling me how Catholicism works, old chap; I was brought up a Catholic and I have painful first-hand experience of it.
     I know 'hatred for the sin' when I see it, too. What you have goes considerably deeper than that, I think.
    But maybe I'm wrong.    ]

Bill:-

    I think that's what the Romans thought.   :laugh:

I think too many people have an idealized view of Europeans, that they're a more mature, community-spirited, and sophisticated kind of people.
    Actually, they're just like other human beings in America and Australia and elsewhere. If they're presently more communal and cooperative among themselves, it's purely circumstantial and probably fuelled by the still extant reverberations of two massive wars last century, plus the threat of a Soviet invasion for most of the latter half of that century.

    Bill's notion that Europe is somehow a unified bloc probably stems from reading books and articles like the one he quoted, in which Rifkin speaks of Europeans as though they're all from the one country.
    I believe the reality is quite different. Europe is still very much a collection of individual nation-states, however much the E.U., as an organization, tries to unify them by such means as a common currency, etc. It's possible that the E.U.'s efforts, particularly via monetary homogenization, could eventually bring about a more profound unification, but I have my doubts.

    My view is that history hasn't stopped; at least not yet. It was probably true, after ancient Rome had existed, expanded, and prospered for several centuries, that the people of the time assumed the status quo was a permanent thing. The days of localized tribal warfare were over, civilization had arrived, and the Pax Romana that protected that civilization would endure indefinitely. Europe had learned from its barbaric history and found a better way.
    Little did they realise that world events would shortly carry Europe back down into the barbarity she thought she'd left forever, and keep it there for a thousand years. History hadn't stopped at all; it had only paused, very temporarily. But, if you'd suggested such a possibility in the time of Hadrian, for example, you'd have been laughed out of the Forum.

    European unity is shaky, in my view. Countries like France, Italy, Germany, and perhaps particularly Britain, are still very much paddling their own canoes and looking after their own interests. As long as individual countries vote for individual leaders to meet their own individual aspirations, that will inevitably continue.
    There are antagonistic political forces at work inside individual European countries and inside Europe as a whole. As well as the socialist groups which exist in large numbers, there is a growing groundswell of fascist interests. In fact, even in Russia recently, a large number of parliamentary members voted to have Jewish organizations outlawed within Russia because Jews were alleged to have obtained state property by illicit means (or accusations to that effect).
    CC is quite right that it's politically naive to see Europe as opposing America. The situation is nowhere near as black-and-white as that and I'm surprised that Bill, who is always so careful to point out the dangers of assuming that degree of polarization, should fall into the trap he's constantly warning others about.

    The countries of the E.U. are always squabbling and disagreeing about almost everything, which makes them ineffectual when decisive and visionary action is called for.
    The parallels with the U.N., another example of institutionalized self-interest and corruption, are inescapable.
    While it would be lovely to imagine a world of peace and justice, presided over by a U.N. made up of wise altruistic leaders, whose primary concerns are human dignity and the welfare of all, to believe that is happening now, or likely to happen soon, is just further conspicuous naivety. The same applies to Europe.
    Not that the U.S., as a single entity, is immune to all the same diseases I've just mentioned. Corruption is part of politics everywhere, on all sides.

    But, when it comes to positive action in the world, countries like Australia and America, to name just two, are in a position to 'do' rather than 'discuss'. As an example, when the recent tsunami devastated south-east Asian countries, Australia and America were first on the scene with real, practical, there-on-the-ground aid. They didn't need to call a committee meeting in Brussels or a U.N. summit meeting in New York to decide what to do.
    America, of course, being not only an independent nation state but also the current economic and military top-dog, is in an especially advantageous position to act when action is required.
Bill:-

    Bill, you state this with such authority, as though it is self-evidently true. Yet everything we see in the world today contradicts that notion. The only political entities able to act decisively appear to be those not made up of ill-fitting components, constantly chafing against one another.
    You yourself draw attention to the entities you see as challenging U.S. supremacy. With the exception of the E.U. (whose unity is very much open to debate), they're all nation states like India, Russia, and China.

    The nation state is certainly not dead and I doubt it's even on the decline. In fact, there are good grounds to argue that the era of conglomerates of nations will prove short-lived and not become the universal panacea, the new utopia, that many imagine.

    Just a few more thoughts.   

[P.S. I believe Kool-Aid is some kind of sweet drink, though I've never seen it or tasted it. Am I right in thinking Bill was 'singing' some kind of advertising jingle for the stuff?
        If so, I don't have any idea why that happened, although I guess it was somehow meant to trivialize something I said. Can anyone tell me what was going on with that? I honestly haven't a clue. Thanks.   :up:  ]

Juan Cole:-

    I don't have such a problem. I don't have to imagine any such thing. I know real people who have made this mistake.

Shaun Barrett, about Bill:-

    Hmmm. Nevertheless, still essentially chopped liver, I see!   

That "Wild Things" article serves to convince me even more, as though that were possible (! ), that life can, and more than likely does, exist on Mars.
    I could quote so much of that piece in support of my contention that Mars hosts life but it would be better if you just read it yourselves!
    Nice article, Cindy.  :up:

    Thanks, SpaceNut, for the "High Voltage Mars" article, too. It serves, once again, to underline the glaring inconsistency in NASA's approach to the Viking life-search results.

   
    This quote refers to the results of the Mass Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) experiment, which appeared to show that Martian soil is devoid of organic material, down to parts per billion levels.
    THE SAME GCMS INSTRUMENT, THOUGH, WAS LATER SHOWN TO BE INCAPABLE OF DETECTING ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN ANTARCTIC SOILS KNOWN TO CONTAIN BREEDING COLONIES OF BACTERIA!  i.e. The results it sent back to Earth in 1976 were useless!

    Yet, the mantra goes on and on - even to this day - that Viking proved there was no organic material in the Martian soil. This now discredited GCMS data even forms one of the pillars of this article, and appears as part of its Summary in the first paragraph:-

    I cannot believe this is happening and I don't understand why this BS is being allowed to continue!
    Why is nobody correcting this nonsense about the GCMS results?!!   :realllymad:
    Why are scientists like this Sushil Atreya (the researcher referred to in the article) still labouring under the burden of data known perfectly well by the whole scientific community to be inaccurate?!

    This is real Twilight Zone stuff.   
    No wonder the Conspiracy Theory advocates are alive and well in La La Land - I can see their point of view!   :bars:

Well, maybe ...  but extraordinarily intelligent and sharp-thinking chopped liver!     :laugh:

Despite my tendencies to the Right in politics, which I defend as pragmatism and realism, I am actually an environmentalist - though more along the lines of Bjorn Lomborg. I think we need to analyze the problems we face carefully before we jump to conclusions.
    Having said that, and being still very cautious about the extent and seriousness of global warming and its relationship to human involvement, I want cleaner technology .. now!
    I don't like burning fossil fuels, I don't feel comfortable raising atmospheric CO2 levels, I don't want the seas polluted, I think the human population should be 1 billion - not 6 billion.

    But, at the same time, I don't like science being cheapened by sensationalism. I don't like it when scientific speculation about possible future global warming, based on a best-guess involving hundreds of factors of which we have only the most primitive understanding, is bandied about as though it's fact.
    Temperatures are reported to have risen 0.7 deg.C in the last 100+ years and it looks likely the 30% rise in atmospheric CO2 since the Industrial Revolution has played a part in that.

    But would the world have cooled by a similar amount, over that same period, all of its own accord, if the CO2 levels hadn't risen? Could the descent from a relatively warm interglacial period into a full-blown ice-age be under way, as we speak? Might we, by the sheerest coincidence, be forestalling that ice-age with our CO2 production? Might that CO2 production, even though it rises over the next 50 years, be insufficient to offset the factors pushing us into a deep-freeze, and might temperatures begin to plummet by 2020?
    O.K.!  This is all speculative fantasy of the highest order and I don't know anybody who believes any part of it.
    But, in our present state of ignorance, nobody can rule it out, either. And this is my point.

    I object to the sheerest speculation about future scenarios involving global warming, even those based on much-vaunted computer simulations, being elevated to the status of scientific fact by the media and the public.
    I strongly suspect much of the hype is based on political bias and I'm sorry to say I suspect that taint has even coloured the objectivity of some of the scientists involved.

    I've read reports by seemingly reliable people, which allege the sky will fall unless the Kyoto Protocol is adopted by the United States immediately. The refusal to do so by America, and my own country, Australia, is seen as typical right-wing folly, fuelled by ignorance and greed.
    On the other hand, I've seen reports by equally respectable people, which indicate the Kyoto Protocol is an entirely inadequate document, whose implementation, or otherwise, will have a negligible effect on predicted climate change anyway.

    As CC has reminded us lately, Earth's climate is not stable; it's a natural system of enormous complexity and can change radically for reasons we still don't understand.
    Earth is unusually cold at present, with an ice cap at both Poles. An ice cap at just one Pole is unusual for our planet,  never mind two!  Antarctica, for example, has been largely ice-free for much of the last 150 million years.
    On a lesser time-scale, as has been pointed out in this thread, we've had warm spells and 'mini-ice-ages' (colloquially, that is) in just the last 2-3 thousand years. The northern Sahara desert was the granary of the Roman Empire 2 thousand years ago, it even supported Rome's greatest adversary, the mighty Carthaginian Empire; now it's barren and unproductive sand.
    The truth is, we don't actually know how much of the 0.7 deg.C rise in global average surface temperatures is directly attributable to human CO2 production, and how much of it might have occurred naturally anyway.

    I agree, though, that we ought to minimize our impact on the environment as quickly as we can, simply because of that same ignorance! It cuts both ways.
    But I'd like to see that balance introduced into the T.V. shows and the newspaper articles, instead of the monotonous diet of unfounded doomsday mantras we're getting at present.
                                                            ???

Juan Cole:-

    Unless my memory is failing me, CC and I have already established beyond reasonable doubt, in discussions here months ago, that elective war is most certainly not "always a mistake"!
    One could argue that any war is always a terrible thing, not to be undertaken lightly; that would elicit very few negative responses from any quarter, I'm sure. But there must be very many cases in history which show conclusively that a military 'stitch-in-time' would have been the better option.
    As an example, and at the risk of rehashing the same argument to refute the same nonsense yet again, I invoke the history of Europe leading up to WWII. If the European powers had elected in unison to go to war with Hitler's Germany on any one of several occasions prior to 1939, the Second World War as we know it today would have been averted. In addition, the routing of Nazi Germany before its power grew too great would have resulted in the toppling of Hitler from power long before the instigation of the infamous death-camps which took so many innocent lives.

    I don't pretend to draw direct comparisons between the situation in Germany in the 1930s and the situation in Iraq recently. But the world is a complicated place, politically, and not amenable to analysis by the use of simplistic platitudes like "an elective war is always a mistake".
                                                       

   [P.S. If General Mattis actually said that about the "fun" in shooting people, then action should be taken against him. It would be bad enough for a Private to go on record with that kind of talk but a General is more than just a soldier, he carries some degree of political responsibility also.
    However, to use this as some kind of justification for his "elective war" statement, Cole stretches credulity well beyond breaking point. I think it's an emotionally-charged and transparently specious argument on his part, which most thinking people, I suspect, will have quite rightly dismissed out of hand.]