I think it would be best if the language of space was English rather than Mandarin though... but as long as it's Human, that's just a minor detail.
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
Perspective
I think it would be best if the language of space was English rather than Mandarin though... but as long as it's Human, that's just a minor detail.
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7 comments:
XKCD?
Love it anyway :)
Stace
My six year old daughter is of this new, lucky generation growing up with the knowledge that extrasolar planets exist. Rather than fairytopia or pixie hollow, she's created her own imaginary galaxy, with Hot Jupiters orbiting Red Giants and Super Earths paired with Brown Dwarfs and a much better definition of "planet" (vs dwarf planet). This is where *her* fairies and mermaids live, along with a creature called a "stargazer", a sort of one-eyed living telescope.
I felt like the Very Best Parent Ever(tm) as we began building our first 'scope this week. Until, of course, the whole reason for her enthusiasm became clear when she made this statement:
"This is GREAT! I can't wait to see my first Hot Jupiter!"
It's a 144mm/f8 on a Dob mount.
Even with perfect collimation and some really nice eyepieces, we'll just be able to resolve Pluto (her favorite local, of course) at -13 on a perfect night. I don't think we're going to match those fancy NASA-created animated graphics, to say nothing of measuring a tiny bit of star-wiggle or brightness variances.
Amazing world they'll inherit.
Umm...the left fucking hates nuclear power, and anything resembling a Project Orion is DOA (or the British Interplanetary Society's 1970s proposal).
I think there's something to be said for the military retaining control of spaceflight and wishing NASA had never been created. We'd have such cool things as MOLS, Dynasoars, and US Army moon bases with nuclear minefields :)
Amanda in the South Bay
Nuclear power is one area in which I disagree strongly with my fellow leftists, ballistic missile defense being the other.
@amandainsjc - at least in the U.S.A., it depends on what part of the left, and what type of reactor. The environmental movement of the left used to be completely anti-nuclear, but there are now significant factions that consider it the lesser of two evils (compared, to, say, burning coal).
It seems that this may be true in Australia as well... See Why vs. Why: Nuclear Power, for example - both authors use environmental arguments (one considers it part of a solution for global warming; the other considers it not fast enough of a solution to be useful to combat global warming).
My opinion is that we should spend more R&D on fission reactors; it seems that they might be rather useful in the long term, particuarly if we don't succeed in making viable fusion reactors.
Hey Zoe..just wanted to drop by your little corner of the web and root around a bit. Interesting...
but I still maintain you're saying something dispicable about my mother over at Zombie's place!
Carry on smartly lassie!
I'm also pro-English for the language of space. It's far more adaptable in my opinion. I mean, already English has absorbed at least parts of many languages on Earth while still remaining mostly intelligible.
In other news, I don't think I really recall a time when I didn't want to be a space colonist. I'd be good for even a Lunar or Mars colony, so long as it's somewhere off Terra.
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