New Mars Forums

Hi Errorist!
    I think I see what you mean. But maybe haematite only forms in geometric shapes, like flat-sided hexagons or octagons or whatever, if it is pure.
    These martian spheres are formed in an environment which includes many solutes, including compounds of sulphur, magnesium and chlorine.
    Maybe you're thinking of pure crystals of haematite, whereas these are impure and therefore described as concretions; solidified from a mixture of compounds but with haematite merely the predominant ingredient(?).
                                            ???

    If spherical mainly-haematite concretions could only arise as a by-product of biology, I'm sure we would have heard more about it by now.

That picture of the sand dune (that the damned tourists ruined! ) is quite interesting.
    The surface looks so dry and loose but, just beneath a thin crust, the material is much darker and very cohesive.
    I'm thinking it must be quite damp and salty just under the surface. Is that the official viewpoint at JPL too at the moment?
                                                    ???

And you're absolutely right, Byron, that we shouldn't "get all twisted up in a knot about this kind of thing...".
    Before SBird educated me about the full facts of the matter, I was thinking scary thoughts about how Yellowstone is 40,000 years overdue for a major eruption! I was also thinking it had been about the same time interval since the appearance of Cro-Magnon man.
    Just imagine! Ever since the dawn of modern man, we've been blissfully unaware that Yellowstone was hanging over our heads - possibly due to explode any minute. And wouldn't it be ironic if, no sooner than we recognised the danger, the damned thing decided to blow!
    And what further irony, that we're finally discussing planet-killing events, like asteroid impacts, and taking the threat seriously, and finally thinking about becoming a two-planet species for safety's sake, and then we get annihilated just before we actually do something about it!

    What a cosmic joke that would be!     

Don't worry about your English, Rxke; I've never had any trouble understanding anything you've posted here.
    Actually, there's somebody here who shall remain nameless, who is supposed to be a native-born English speaker, whom I find almost incomprehensible at times!
                                                         

    You're doing just fine, believe me.
                                                       

Thanks Rxke!
    The sand in the 'sand cakes' picture sure looks sticky, doesn't it?
    Reminds me of salty terrestrial beach sand.

Ha-ha!!   :laugh:

Hi Alt2War.
    Your last post is typical of the attitude of so many lefties, who will use anything, even the unnecessary death and injury of thousands of innocent people, to further their cause.
    It appears you are so rabidly anti-Bush and anti-Iraq-war that you will perpetrate, with breathtaking arrogance and disregard for reality, the very crime you applaud the Spanish people for punishing at their election, the crime of milking tragedy for personal benefit.

    To save time and repetition here, I ask you to read my post at Appropriate Topics: On War and Politics, dated Mar 16 2004, 07:58.
    It points out the real reasons the Spanish people were attacked; the reasons why all liberal democracies are under attack by these barbarians.

    I regret to have to use such strong language, but it is precisely your kind of political opportunism I despise the most. Please, try to concentrate on the real enemy here, rather than airing your left-wing ideology at the expense of the Spanish victims.
    When Al-Qa'ida comes to your neighbourhood one day, they won't care if you're waving a red flag and spluttering that you opposed the war ... they'll kill you anyway!
    They don't care! Get it?!!
                                                            ???

Hi Don Panic.
    The Spanish were attacked because they are not a hard-line Muslim theocracy. That's all the qualification you need.
    America and Australia (in Bali) were attacked before Iraq was invaded.
    No organisation on Earth put more obstacles in the way of the invasion of Iraq than the U.N. However, the Iraqi headquarters of the U.N. in Baghdad was attacked in August 2003 and Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, special representative of the U.N. Secretary General, and universally loved and respected, was killed.

    Jemaah Islamiah, the extremist Muslim organisation affiliated to Al-Qu'aida, which orchestrated the attack which killed 88 Australian citizens in Bali, went on record as saying Australians were targeted not because of anything they had done, but because of what they were.
    They were, and are, liberal democratic members of Western Civilisation and, as such, representatives of the highest order of civilisation yet attained on this planet. Not representatives of a perfect civilisation, you understand, but of the best yet. This is a civilisation which upholds in law the right of everyone to a say in how they are governed, which upholds equality of the sexes, which upholds the right of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and which outlaws slavery.

    This is where the Spanish people went wrong. They too are civilised, tolerant freedom-loving people. Until they embrace a bigoted close-minded Islamic Theocracy, they (and we also) will be subject to the attacks of these primitive religious zealots. You don't have to do anything else to qualify!
    In fact, the poor Spanish people did do one other thing to bring the mindless cruelty of Al-Qa'ida down upon themselves. Osama Bin Laden went on record as saying he could never forget "the tragedy of Andalusia". You might be forgiven for not understanding this added excuse for butchery, since it dates back many centuries to the expulsion of the Islamic Moors from the Iberian Peninsula by Christians! This is how limitless the insane hatred and revenge of Bin Laden really is, and it's impossible to understand the ignorance of the thousands of followers who actually place credence in his particular brand of religious bigotry.

    So please, Don Panic, don't try to perpetuate the myth of Western guilt by blaming the victims in this tragedy. The criminals are the Islamic extremists and their hatred had no need of the invasion of Iraq as an excuse to practise their brand of barbarism; it's inculcated into them in schools run by their hate-filled teachers.

    Personally, I don't care how far up the Islamic fundamentalist vengeance list my country is raised - the higher the better in my view - because the more they hate me, the better the job of irritating them I must be doing! Any Western man or woman who bleats that they've been made more of a target for Islamic extremist barbarians, by standing up for what's right, is a craven coward who doesn't deserve the freedom s/he enjoys.

    I don't believe in appeasement. Winston Churchill once said that "an appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile in the hope it will eat him last".
    There's nowhere to hide in this war against terror, Don Panic, so let's not pretend there is. The enemy is without reason and without mercy and cares not a jot whether you are left wing, right wing, libertarian, feminist, fascist or republican ... they will kill you just the same, because you aren't an extremist Muslim!.
    Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

    Comprenez-vous, mon ami?
                                                                                                    ???

Arthur C. Clarke went on record years ago saying he never travels by any means of transport in which he can't read a newspaper whilst travelling!
    This, of course, is essentially a snub to the concept of owning and driving a motor vehicle and implicit recognition that public transport is the only sensible way to travel.

    Personally, I love cars and always have. It's hard for me to contemplate a world in which the freedom of personal car ownership and control no longer exists in its historical sense. Living in Australia, where there are still endless expanses of open road to enjoy, only makes it harder to let go!
    But if present trends in traffic congestion continue, and people keep dying in large numbers on our roads, it's very difficult to put forward any kind of sensible argument against the automation of vehicle guidance. And advances in computer technology, of course, have given us the technical ability to achieve that goal whenever we muster the political will to do so.

    I have to say, despite my emotional attachment to cars, that I support Byron's suggestion that perhaps the time has come.
                                             

    [Unlike Josh, I'm not surprised at CC's endorsement of computer-controlled vehicles; I've always found CC to be eminently logical on most subjects.
     On the other hand, without wishing to elicit a lecture on politics, what would an anarchist want with a large centrally-controlled computer network keeping tabs on every journey we undertake - knowing when we leave home and where we go? Sounds more like the Soviet-style centralised system we spent a whole Cold War overcoming.]
                                        :;):

As we get older, diets are definitely good things to get into, Cindy. But my advice is not to treat diets as diets but as permanent lifestyle changes.
    About two years ago, I stepped onto the bathroom scales and staggered back in horror! I was 4 kg (~9 lbs) over the weight I'd fondly imagined I'd always been since my early twenties.
    It had snuck up on me because, in my earlier years, I'd been able to eat almost anything I wanted without putting on weight. But as we get older, most of us find that's no longer the case. And there is evidence now that high-sugar and high-carbohydrate intake is not only fattening but may be associated with accelerated aging as well. One longevity researcher I read about recently is so convinced that sugars and carbohydrates shorten your lifespan, she's all but given them up! (A bit fanatical, I think.)

    I know the Atkins Diet has been subject to adverse criticism lately, particularly from the people who've advocated high-carb diets over the past 30 years. But I find it interesting that, back when I was a kid in the late fifties and early sixties, fat people were really quite rare and you tended to notice them. They stood out - in more ways than one! Back then, everybody ate butter and eggs and drank full cream milk. They ate red meat 3 or 4 times a week, if not more, with potatoes and vegetables. Nobody was into oats and bran and muesli and pasta, and highly processed sugary foods were relatively uncommon compared to now.
    In the old days, people weren't scared to eat real natural foods, including meat fat and milk fat etc. Our everyday diet was much closer to the Atkins Diet than the stuff we started eating in the late sixties, seventies, eighties and so on. And obesity was unusual!

    I now tend to eat more eggs, meat, fish, fruit and nuts. I don't fret too much about a little bit of fat. I still have cereal for breakfast with a banana, because I like it(! ), but maybe a couple of times a week I have crispy-fried bacon (fat and all) and fried eggs. Lunch is usually a boiled egg and chicken with 'non-diet' thousand island dressing and a handful of nuts (roasted and salted cos I like 'em that way). My evening meal is more varied and does include pasta maybe twice a week but commonly consists of old fashioned meat/fish, mashed potatoes (love 'em! ) and vegetables .. good wine ... fruit but no dessert!
    Oh, and I drink a cup of coffee with breakfast and lunch but not at night (keeps me awake).

    I've done all this because I needed to do it. I needed a lifestyle change because my body was getting out of control with what I was doing to it. Or at least, it was beginning to control me rather than the other way around!
    I'm back to 74 kg again now, same as I was at 25 years old, and my weight varies very little. It did take me about six months to lose those extra 4 kg but that's O.K. Crash diets and relapses are apparently especially bad for the system.

    Cindy, I admire your determination in taking back control of your food intake. I think it's all too easy for us these days to just go along with the trend in the developed world towards eating too much, and too much of the wrong things!
    But be careful not to aim for a quick weight loss by denying yourself everything you enjoy. I believe that's not only bad for your metabolism but bad for your morale! Better to just reduce the total amount you eat, more so with sugary foods and carbs, but allow yourself small amounts of the things you enjoy. Then you can adapt to making your new 'diet' just a part of your life instead of something you 'go on' and then 'go off'.

    Hell!!! What a boring lecture from a boring old f***!!   
    But it works for me.
                                       

When you consider how precious this piece of machinery is, it does sound reckless to entrust it to a journey of hundreds of kilometres in a van!
    But I've never heard of a removal truck or van being involved in an accident. I suppose it must happen occasionally but obviously not very often. Then you have to evaluate what proportion of removal van accidents result in serious damage to the payload. Most accidents, thank God, are relatively minor and this spacecraft is not as fragile as all that. The report says it's spent 3 months in the testing department being "baked, frozen, spun, shaken and probed". (It's a wonder they didn't smash the damned thing before it even left the assembly building!! )
    So, as a percentage of the total risk to Messenger, including the launch, transit, manoeuvres, planetary gravity assists etc., how significant is the van ride? I would suggest it's probably a very small risk by comparison (- though that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our best to eliminate as many risks as possible).

    And what about air freight? Everyone knows flying is safer than driving, so why not fly the thing to Florida?! I guess there's a good reason not to but I can't think of it right now.

    And as for building everything on the spot in Florida, I suppose there may be people with certain expertise in other states who are better at doing certain things, have children in highschool, and don't particularly want to move to Florida.

    Or could there be some politics involved? .... Naahhhh!!
                                             

"The Prisoner", (Patrick McGoohan).