New Mars Forums

I absolutelt love Beentheredonethat's posts. They are fantastic.

Zeno's problem was that he was trying to prove 'monism'. His arguments were demonstrably wrong but his rivals lacked the tools to disprove them a priori. We have them now and all they do is show that Zeno is still wrong

But hey, the Americans taking their sweet time to get to Mars allows the rest of us time to organise a race.

It probably a lack of materialistic worship. Stuff just isn't worth protecting to that level. Its definitely not worth an altercation where both parties could get seriously wounded.

I have had a computer stolen clean out of my living room, but it was insured. Normally it is the car that gets stolen but it usually shows up the next day, sans mags, so no harm done.

I might get a working lock installed on my front door one day.

Of course it may be that the criminals have taken up Cobras policy. Shoot everyone even if they are not interfering with your crime, that way they don't have a chance to go for a gun or I.D. you later.

Most 'Rights' come with a dual nature that duties, I would suppose, do not.

In a lot of countries one may have the right to vote, but in most of those you also have the equal and opposite right not to vote. The idea that you ought to vote comes from a sense of duty either to ideals religion or anscestors.

One has a right not to defend oneself in most places where one also has the right to do otherwise. Now in many places duty will instruct you to defend yourself or those around you, but in a non-violent march duty requires that you do not defend yourself. Failing to defend yourself from police aggression, for example, is not a moral failure to utilise your right to defend yourself.

Innit?

Aren't rights more self centered than duties which tend to be selfless?

Twas more a counter to the above remark. The Ussr did not believe in individual duties being paramount did they?

Or maybe they did. Can communism be rendered as a general fulfilling of ones duties to society? Does your right to ignore the poor trump you duty to help them?

Given that the thread is meant to be about the rights/duties dichotomy.

We do don't we?

Whats really scary is the whining about anti-american bias being present in American media. You have to be kidding me.

Often anti-god stuff can come through but religion and patriotism are not the same thing. Sad that I can actually expect people to be offended by that idea.

The warehouse is in really nice neighbourhood?

Planets have a deep desire to be spherical.  If you modify it by much the rock will flow back into a ball.

I don't know what scale that would occur at though...

I think you will enjoy this one then:

http://www.justbewise.net/matrix.html

China has given themselves twelve years. If I recall, America went from where China is now, to the moon in about eight years and that was without years of ICBM's, Russian tech, super computers or CFD and the like.

2017 is an easy date. 2010 is actually reasonable given the global body of knowledge and technology.

That's brilliant. Except that a certian country wouldn't care if you did 10% worth of damage. We do not negotiate with other humans!

I am a jingoist I guess. Does that count?