With modern orbital imaging telescopes such as the Hubble (the Keplar platform in this particular case), more and more "planets" are being discovered to lie within the sweet spot in solar systems called the habitable zone. What this means to humanity is still in the beginning stages of research. Whether these planets are even relevant to humanity (as many of them are millions of years away at our current technological capabilities) remains to be seen.
I have issues with current methodologies as well. Some of the methods being used to find these planets are still open to doubt as to their viability. Methods such as ecliptic occultation (shadows of planets moving across the disk of the star) and gravitational perturbations (eg. anomalies in the rotation of the stars) are theoretically sound, but the extreme distances some of these observations are being made leave lots of room for error in data interpretation.
With such large numbers, even a small error can mean a lot; especially if you factor in that the universe, due to its expanding nature, is becoming more chaotic as a system the older it gets. As such, the larger the numbers become, the larger the errors in interpretation.
My question, or rather, my intent, is to open a dialogue on the possibility of humanity eventually reaching beyond Earth and grasping a toehold into the universe at large.
Do people think its something we'll ever get around to, or is it something just too big for us to surmount?
I will reveal my own feelings on this after I get feedback (if any) from the rest of the CS community.
How many weeks or months has Obama spent as a POW?
T's got a point, Dude. I've got my own issues with McCain but I won't say he hasn't honored his country above and beyond the call of duty as a soldier.
I'm agreeing with letting the banks fail. Spend the money on research for new financial means and methods. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result IS insanity...
You have to look at what they're teaching their citizens, though, dude. Exactly enough to be a good drone, and nothing else. No Child Left Behind = No Child Truly Empowered, and these regimented, caste system, and authoritarian regimes get exactly what they put into it. Garbage in, garbage out, if that's what you want, a whole crop of cyborgs.
The strength of America has always been its ability to think outside of the box. Free-thinkers, not sheep. Both parties want sheep, because sheep vote partisan tickets, they don't think for themselves.
In reality, Partisanship has become the poison that will kill this country.
There's no point in trying to elucidate the function of the "invisible hand" to socialists OR oligarchists. Both want to tie that hand to serve them and their interests only.
That's not the way it works. Tying the hand via regulation or oligarchy/monopoly builds pressure. That's what a "bubble" is. Housing "bubble", credit "bubble", etc. They're all created by applying artificial stresses on a dynamic system.
And I sense an oxymoron in this statement of yours, highlighted. Ethics and banks are a contradiction in terms if you truly understand how they make their money. The whole industry is criminal to begin with.
To legitimize usury by saying "do it ethically" is like saying you can pick a dog turd up by the "clean" end. Not gonna' happen unless you get people to hold their noses and close their eyes, as has been done many times before.
I've always voted for State Governers over Senators no matter what party for executive branch. Senators both D & R have twitchy habits regarding spending. Governers have at least had to deal with balancing budgetary concerns and balancing the tripartite role of Republican governmental structure (Congress, Judicial, Executive). Senators just like to spend money.
McCain narrowly had my vote over an inexperienced junior DEM senator until he picked Palin as VP. I've some resentment about LS&L toward him and the other 4 for decades since they destroyed my trust (literally, my college trust went bye-bye because of Keating)in their financial shenanigans.
I was willing to vote based on his financial experience despite this (he would have at least picked some sane economists for the Treasury and rolled us more toward centrist social policy from the start), but a Young Earther in the wings if he had a coronary was just too much.
Case in point on analgesic effect. Those very same drugs (very strong pain-killers) don't even touch my pain, they just impair me. Whereas I may have some short-term memory issues on cannabis, the pain is abated, and I can still function.
I don't drive anyway, so my use of cannabis cannot be said to be a threat to anyone anywhere, for any reason. Their stupidity is to blame if I happen to injure them, because I will have reached the point where I just can't take it anymore, and figure Darwin will understand.
Many people don't realize or care about the history of cannabis prohibition. Its an economic thing.
Cui bono? Big business. Not the public. Thank Dupont, Eli Lily, and Hearst for prohibition. They simply cannot compete against the cheap and prolific growth of cannabis for petroleum & fiber products, as well as its analgesic and psychotropic effects.
Additionally, Prohibition is what makes cannabis a gateway drug. Black Market suppliers don't care about age, they have multiple products, and a curious teen will escalate their use due to availability.
Place cannabis in a liquor store, and sure, they'll still get it, but like tobacco, the use of it by teens from this type of venue doesn't automatically escalate to harder drugs. In a dealers house, its almost guaranteed due to curiosity and the risk/reward drives in the youthful.
I've a legal right in my state due to my chronic pain to utilize cannabis in a medicinal sense. That is the will of the state.
As more states realize the futility of bucking a growing majority of individuals who utilize it in this fashion, the Federal case for prohibition will continue to lose ground.
The Feds need to back off. To keep forcing their position despite growing opposition just lends more validity to their opponents. Its like arguing with an imbecile.
It will eventually occur to both parties that "dissent = disloyatly" is not a viable position with the voters. When the elected are so far out of touch with the will of the people, partisan rhetoric is bound to be polarized. That's what happens in the land of Oz. When they finally come back to planet Earth, they'll realize that clicking your heels and chanting "there's no place like home" doesn't rid you of people that don't agree with you. It only strengthens the opposition.
Running McCain and Palin was the biggest mistake the GOP ever made. As an independent I vote the person and the issues, not the party. I think Rocky and Bullwinkle would have had a better chance than a Keating five senator and a flat-earth bimbo.
Hope & Change: (I hope I have change after the gov rapes my paycheck.)
The Audacity of Hope (The disease called hope you mean.)
Truth is never found in a slogan. Just appeals to emotion. Both the GOP and the DEMs are guilty of this. Apparently people are pissed on both sides of the aisle. Politicians are just so out of touch, that vague platitudes are all they can offer. Until they suffer like the rest of us (no pay raises, no Cadillac health care, automatic term limits unless they prove their worth) they will never BE in touch with main street.
Innumerancy & Illiteracy do funny things to an electorate. They can't add or read, but they can shout "Yes we can!" until the cows come home. Or the bill for all the useless pork.
Harry Reid: Back off, Obama. You're stepping on my earmark.
Basically the FDR New Deal is bankrupt. The idea was good for its time, I guess, but times are changing. Government cannot deregulate and then mandate an intangible like insurance. Reagan did that in the 80's with P & C and the price tripled. It didn't work with car insurance, and it damn well won't work with health insurance.
Insurance companies are the biggest crooks next to bankers and pharmaceutical companies, and the level of their greed is contrary to Objectivism and rational self-interest. When companies grow that large (too big to fail) then accountability is lost. If they can't be held accountable, they damage the economy like AIG and Safeco. They tie the invisible hand that directs free markets with their special interest money, and true competition is lost. If their services are mandated, kiss America goodbye.
Haven't read through the whole thread, so I apologize if I'm repeating anyone's sentiments.
I think the House should pass a bill to eliminate the Cadillac Health care Congress gets until they have a comparable system for the rest of us. Until then, with their entitlements, we are going to get nothing. Perhaps being in our shoes for a change will motivate them to come up with a reasonable alternative to the HCR. Not that I'm saying the HCR is reasonable, but they have to do something, but jobs come first.
As every cloud has a silver lining, every exit is an entrance somewhere else. The polarities of the universe are a mental construct; in truth sadness and joy, good and evil, positive and negative are all labels that we assign.
The "worst" thing in your life may be, in fact, the best thing that ever happens to you, because it forces you to realize that everything we gain can be lost in an instant, including life.
If you cannot even possess yourself; how can you dare to hope to hold on to anything else in this life?
I think the post still has value though, in the sense that the Founding Fathers (Christian, Deist, or otherwise) rejected the rationale of nobility seated in the notion of Divine Right, so after our country's founding, Divine Right was a non-issue.
Not so in Europe, which I guess the classical Libertarian movement resorted to anarchistic ideologies in order to justify their rebellion. I actually wasn't aware of that. I've always associated my Libertarian views to Goldwater's camp. Funny how we learn things if we're not shouting our lungs out at each other.
I personally don't actually think everyone is created equal, though. Let me clarify so people don't think I'm some sort of bigot. The concept that the vast majority of us are created equally mediocre, I will agree with. There is an unwritten law of the universe I like to call the Law of Conservation of Genius. Extraordinary people are very rare, while mediocrity is exactly what the term intimates, the median, and thus, the majority.
True greatness is someone the world rarely sees. When we do, the herd reaction is to tear them apart. Sad, really.
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
“Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”
“It’s time America realized that there is no gay exemption in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence.”
"You don't need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight."
"I certainly believe in aliens in space. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities....I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about – and probably never will unless the Air Force discloses them."
In 1996, he told Bob Dole, whose own presidential campaign received lukewarm support from conservative Republicans: "We're the new liberals of the Republican party. Can you imagine that?" In that same year, with Senator Dennis DeConcini, Goldwater endorsed an Arizona initiative to legalize medical marijuana against the countervailing opinion of social conservatives.
I have no loyalty to Loughlen at all, T so I'm not sure what you mean by denouncing him as representative of anything I might advocate. I think he's representative of feelings on both sides of the spectrum gone out of control.
The McVeigh thing weighed just as much on my mind as it must have with yours, because he represented something more akin to any stereotype that may or may not be applied to me at the time pre-Y2K (survivalist loner holed up in the woods with a huge stash of ammunition and food. OMG that's me...well, minus the bombs, and other anti-social, anti-gov activities.)
You seem to be much more informed about the details of his (Loughlens) character as known at this point than I am, so I bow to any details that portray him as some sort of "Liberal" nutcase, and denounce and sever as you say. And I am speaking of the Emanuelesque witch-hunt the Left went on way too soon to know anything in attacking Palin. She didn't deserve it, I denounce it and I think it all stinks. God, what do people think she is, some sort of monster? She reminds me of Sandy G. that lived twelve miles up the highway from me. She brought cookies over to us when I was a kid. Jeez. I couldn't stand her vapid small talk with my mother, but it didn't make her some sort of broom-riding battle-axe.
I apologize for patronizing you and appearing provincial. I have no degrees to spout to bolster my credibility as an intellectual, nor am I an expert on French or European History.
I am, however, sticking by my assertion that American Libertarianism and its origins are tied to different origins than what libertarianism means in the classical sense. Good day to you all. I'm going to find something more constructive to do with my time.
A sense of civility and moral behavior that many people lack, on both sides, or this incident would not be taking on the tone of a witch-hunt. I still fail to see how this ties into the debate about destigmatization T. Again, my position is that it is not a criminal issue to imbibe what you want to as long as this all too critical sense of responsibility to community is not forgotten.
My libertarian views are based on being from pioneer stock. In the mountains of Oregon where I grew up, civility and common courtesy were practiced as a way of life, not because the government had hate laws, but because its the right thing to do. Out beyond the power lines, civility is practiced because you may need that neighbors help come planting time when every hand you can get is sorely appreciated.
I think this board and the internet itself represents part of the problem. People can say whatever they want to, and have no real accountability. Say things about your neighbors on King Mountain, and its good luck with that corn all by yourself Kemosabe. Community means absolutely nothing to anyone anymore, in any real sense of the word.
Galactic_bodhi Forum Posts (9,196)
oh...excuse me.
Science: Theory & Fact - 50+ New "Habitable" Planets?
Trish suggested a new category for science to the mods, but I can't find the thread now. Don't know if it has been deleted, or I'm just going blind.But in the meantime, writing & quotes seem about the most appropriate category to place something like this in.
With modern orbital imaging telescopes such as the Hubble (the Keplar platform in this particular case), more and more "planets" are being discovered to lie within the sweet spot in solar systems called the habitable zone. What this means to humanity is still in the beginning stages of research. Whether these planets are even relevant to humanity (as many of them are millions of years away at our current technological capabilities) remains to be seen.
I have issues with current methodologies as well. Some of the methods being used to find these planets are still open to doubt as to their viability. Methods such as ecliptic occultation (shadows of planets moving across the disk of the star) and gravitational perturbations (eg. anomalies in the rotation of the stars) are theoretically sound, but the extreme distances some of these observations are being made leave lots of room for error in data interpretation.
With such large numbers, even a small error can mean a lot; especially if you factor in that the universe, due to its expanding nature, is becoming more chaotic as a system the older it gets. As such, the larger the numbers become, the larger the errors in interpretation.
My question, or rather, my intent, is to open a dialogue on the possibility of humanity eventually reaching beyond Earth and grasping a toehold into the universe at large.
Do people think its something we'll ever get around to, or is it something just too big for us to surmount?
I will reveal my own feelings on this after I get feedback (if any) from the rest of the CS community.
Regards.