Patrick
Patrick is a mid-40 year old geek with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Information Systems. Nothing he says here has anything to do with the official position of his employer or any other institution.
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on Weekend Plans Post: Leonard CohenHeh. I was already unmotivated and this holiday configuration just made it worse. Couple that with c…
on Weekend Plans Post: Leonard CohenIt’s only lewd in the biblical sense. Same with you on the work thing. Talk about unmotivated!
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024It is not a great look. While I don't want to overstate the importance of this kind of thing I have…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024Bezos, apparently, killed a political cartoon that featured him. Jeff Bezos never wanted this cartoo…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024We don't really know if Trump is a first time offender or not. I would guess not. But standard pract…
on Series! Recap of World Series of the 1930sThis was a lot of fun to read! "[1937] is, by the way, the most recent time the Giants made the post…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024True. And Hunter Biden would like a word.
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A Suburban New Year’s Tragedy, or What’s the Use?
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We tiny.Report
We’re not tiny. Mars is apparently huge. It must only look so small because of some mind-warping device that somebody is emitting from their planet. These Martians scare me. We must nuke their planet.Report
I just love Earth playing the role of Evening Star.Report
You are here. (Restrooms are down the hall to the left.)Report
I thought John Fogerty said there was a Bath Room on the Right.Report
I thought it was a bad moon on the right.Report
Just more evidence that space is BIG.
I saw gravity a few weeks back and remember the opening scene thinking….”yah…I’d love to be there.”
But, even more so than the wilds and the deep, space is a cold uncaring place with lots of dangers. One misstep, one careless moment and you’re gone.Report
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.Report
Agreed, the utter vastness of space is just crushing. One enjoys the sci-fi episodes, the Star Treks, the Star Warses etc but all of that dreaming just shatters against the sheer titanic reality of the vastness of space and our own current inability to find anything that moves faster than the speed of light (itself a speed that we have no feasible or practical means of accelerating a body up to).
That we must escape the Terran gravity well is ecologically imperative. Once can theorize an industrialized and resource harvesting solar space without having to posit some kind of black box technology but the idea of escaping the Solar System? It is a crushingly difficult proposition to even imagine. Perhaps some kind of mega city sized space ship, self-sustaining and durable trundling patiently through the incredible gulfs with thousands of generations of humans aboard repairing it, harvesting the surrounding void and living their entire lifespans within it?Report
@north
That we must escape the Terran gravity well is ecologically imperative.
I’m coming round to the thought that escaping the gravity well may be an ecological impossibility; we’re not separate from the ecology, but part of it, and have complex flora and fauna and weight-bearing that may well dead end outside the appropriate environment for more then a few years.Report
I think we’ll get out. Maybe it’s wishfull thinking, but I think the allure of a new “wild west” and desire to flee “civilization” will drive people. Time will indeed tell.Report
@damon I don’t think it impossible, but I think it unlikely we’ll realize how many of our fellow travelers on Planet Earth we’ll need to bring along to make it possible. In particular, I don’t think we’ve a good notion yet of the vast variety of microbes we depend on. We’re primed to kill them before we even determine if their friend or foe. Germ phobic even as our very existence depends on germs.Report
Quite possibly Zic.Report
The first few attempts to go exosolar are very, very probably suicide missions.
I’d go anyway, but that’s me.Report
Is your use of “chemist” her a quote or affect, or are there regions in the US where that’s standard?Report
Brandon, that’s HHGTG. Adams was British. They use funny words for things.Report