New Mars Forums

Which brotherhood?

http://imageshack.us/

is probably the easiest.

After you upload.  Just copy and paste the "Direct link to image" URL.  It will look something like this ...

http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/4057 … gerkv6.jpg

There are some nice pressure graphs on this page ...

http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12 … rview.html

You can even make the rectennas out of the Martian soil ...

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlin … ar99_1.htm

Puh-lease.  Neuromancer was 1984.  Gibson had founded, mastered and exhausted the genre before Stephenson knew there was a train to jump on.  Snow Crash has some nice images though.

I actually did read Holy Blood Holy Grail some time ago as a kind of Fortean guilty pleasure like Chariot of the Gods or Book of the Damned ("If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?" etc, etc). 

HBHG was a little disturbing in that it refreshes the idea of literal descendents of god living among us - which Christianity (to its credit) has purged.  Reacceptance of the idea pushes us closer to neotheocratic nightmare world ala Handmaid's Tale.  Hopefully the overexposure of Da Vinci Code will help rather than hurt on this front.

Just an FYI - you don't need to copy and paste.
To revert to a previous version,
click on history
then click on the date of the version you want
then click on edit this page
it will say: WARNING: You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page.
but that's what you want in this case
then click save page.
This works even when vandals try sneaky things like multiple edits.

Pretty much the same stuff as Earth.

Another luciferian cathedral, clark?  Will all the rockets launch on schedule?  Will it last a thousand years?  Surely the 20th century suffered enough.  Must we infect the 21st?

Yes, yes, and in the center of the temple can be a Great Globe full of the cremated remains of those who have lived a life of purest altruism and before the Globe an Altar on which virgin newly weds would conceive a child and they would tell her that altruism had been imprinted upon her soul which was really quite fortunate since philosopher kings were in desperately short supply.

And how do we fulfill our collective goals today?  A million self-organizing interconnected networks support our daily needs, wants and dreams.  Central planning fails because it can never compete with massive parallelism.  Cathedrals are brittle and self-limiting.  Bazaars can be decimated and then adapt, reroute and continue on.

Cathedrals are built long after the railroads - and they wouldn't be built otherwise.  All this imagery has Earth birthing a precious only child who will be spoiled if they watch commercial television or eat candy.  We want a self-organizing, self-healing transport and life-support system.  Yes it must be near alive, just as a city can feel alive at times, but not only can decentralized profit-motivated organization acheive this, it has proven itself superior in practice by quite a margin.

The same chances we have now?  You can argue that it isn't enough, but a quick compare and constrast should recommend the free-market to you.  If you need perspective, ask some recent US immigrants why they came and if they would go back.

In theory perhaps, but alas, none of us live in the platonic realms. 
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There are so many definitions of exploitation here that it is hard to comment.

Exploitation is use of extraterrestrial resources?  Can it be that mere use is offensive?  Shall we give back sunshine and starlight?  Perhaps use must only be passive?  This would seem to be a kind of primitivism - the rejection of tool use.

Exploitation is action that is not selfless?  This is a hard standard.  All astronauts must first be bodhisattvas.  I think this falls under "we must solve our problems on Earth before reaching for the stars."  But what if reaching for the stars is a key to solving our problems on Earth?

Exploitation is profitable action?  Extraterrestrial society must be a communist utopia?  I think you are going to be waiting a long time.

Exploitation is nonegalitarian action?  This is an even more abstract individual vs. the group discussion.  I think it has the same problems as the moral calculus of the Utilitarians ("greatest good for the greatest number").  How will you determine what actions increase equality and what actions decrease equality?  Is competition to be disallowed to prevent ranking?  I think a reality is that, in the end, even the most social of actions are performed by individuals.  Social equality is of necessity relative.

Exploitation is inaesthetic action?  Well now, finally a sensible criteria.  Everything is permitted provided only that it increases beauty.
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Really nice for a solo effort.  I've paid to listen to much worse.
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It's a Quicktime movie of Cassini's flyby of Dione ...

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalo … r=PIA07749

It really is extraordinary.  I hope they put together more of these.
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