Yeah, I'm a little disappointed by the unnecessary misquotes and 'making up arguments' myself, sort of kills the debate. I never made excuses for the cops, and I always agreed they were in the wrong. I never said Hammond was a threat to anyone, or that I felt threatened by filming.

What I have been saying, again and again, is that he can be a tool for intentionally trying to provoke this reaction, even if the cops are completely wrong. It's not a discussion about whether or not his action was legal, but you keep on bringing up the cops reaction as though that is relevant. Which makes it sound as though your argument is: "as long as what he did was legal, he can't be a tool for doing it." Which I disagree with; see also 'open carry' protests etc.

As for what effect the first amendment audits will have on legislation, I imagine it'll be a similar scenario as when corporations exploit tax loopholes. Once somebody comes up with a clever way to remain within their legal rights but still act like an asshole, the system tries to evolve to close those loopholes. I'm all for trying to steer the system in the right direction, but I'm not going to applaud those exploiting loopholes to act like assholes.

As for the strange argument about the watch list, I don't know what you're trying to say - I already told you he's on the list and that I don't think that necessarily means anything. What more did you want to say about that?

Are you going to get back to, again, the fact that the cops were in the wrong? I think we haven't explored that angle yet, let's try going over it three or four times more.

Yes, of course Cruz is a climate denying nutbag and that is what this is REALLY about, despite his rhetoric.
Not the total schooling I was hoping for, but Bolden made a great point, if I may paraphrase him:

Yes, NASA is about space exploration, but we can't explore space without a launchpad. Earth is our launchpad.

um... but... WE want to explore the universe? What's the point if a virus gets to have all of the fun, and can't even call us to tell us about it?

Maybe the virus can build an interstellar radiophone out of a Speak & Spell and an umbrella in order to phone home?

>> ^renatojj:

>> ^deathcow:
Anyone who thinks this money is stupidly spent should be keelhauled. Defense and petroleum sucks those kind of funds from Americans in hours.
Huh, look at that. It seems "less stupid than X" passes as smart these days.
I guess in times of record high unemployment is when we need space exploration spending the most. You know, to boost morale!



"Passes as smart?" thanks

The USA defense budget could pay for this entire Mars mission.... in LESS THAN ONE day. The USA annual defense budget is more than the next 15 highest spending countries combined, and many of those countries are USA allies.

Yet... not the right time to spend any money on scientific efforts. We should probably cancel these stupid Mars programs and give Lockheed/Haliburton another TWELVE HOURS of defense budget. Understood... thanks for schooling me on what smart is. Go Romney?

>> ^deathcow:
Anyone who thinks this money is stupidly spent should be keelhauled. Defense and petroleum sucks those kind of funds from Americans in hours.
Huh, look at that. It seems "less stupid than X" passes as smart these days.

I guess in times of record high unemployment is when we need space exploration spending the most. You know, to boost morale!

it funny how humans can still go back and forth on science and "beliefs". even on a basic philosophical level, this is old hat.

we should really explore the tendency towards "curiosity"

i mean, it's pretty obvious why we had a tendency towards beliefs - a way to explain phenomenon around us. duh.

but why do we have a tendency towards curiosity, and how much more important is that in driving science and culture as a whole?

I'm really fighting back looking at our eventual manned spaceflight program ending as a really, really, really bad thing. It's human nature to explore; I shudder to think what would happen to us as a whole if we cease our exploration efforts.

>> ^Fantomas:

Skyrim is only half the land mass of Cyrodiil, hopefully we get to explore Hammerfell and maybe High Rock also.


It's to be expected. The trend has been for significantly smaller, but more detailed land-masses with each passing game. I think the only exception to this was Daggerfall had a gameworld of some 480,000 square kilometers.

Skyrim is only half the land mass of Cyrodiil, hopefully we get to explore Hammerfell and maybe High Rock also.

Back then you had to beat your rivals to death with animal bones to protect your embeds. Who knew that from such humble beginnings we would eventually explore space, contact extraterrestrial intelligence, and post fart videos? It staggers the imagination.

>> ^spawnflagger:

Carl Sagan said almost the same thing 30 years ago in 1 of the episodes of Cosmos, but instead of caffeinated-arm-flailing-rant format, he said it slow and concisely, albeit slightly monotone. Because of the cold war, and the man-will-destroy-itself-in-nuclear-fallout attitude of the time, he was not so optimistic about finding other societies, because he imagined other societies would do similar, as in they would kill themselves shortly after coming up with radio and nuclear technology.
There was an update to the series a few years later, and he was much more optimistic that humanity would not destroy itself.
Also, it's not likely that any of the early radio waves we sent out will be "readable" once they reach a considerable distance away, so it's irrelevant whether they watch TV or not.

Even without the immediate threat of Nuclear War we still have plenty of time and options to kill ourselves off with. We haven't even travelled to our nearest planet, I think its going to be a while before we ever really explore the Solar System, never mind the rest of the Galaxy. I think if Humans ever do survive that long, if we somehow manage to obtain the wisdom to match our technology and dodge planet killing asteroids, then we will probably have less in common with them than we do with our fishy ancestors.

As for extraterrestrial life, there is a fair chance it exists, or has existed or will exist. I think its not too much of a stretch to imagine intelligent life. I don't think we'll ever find them, not without faster than light travel. And space isn't just vast in 3 dimensions, its pretty fast in a the 4th as well. We have existed for the tiniest sliver of time, we've had technology for a tiny sliver of that...We have to survive for a very very long time before we are anything but a tiny fragment of history.

Maybe someone could clarify, but what exactly is being "won?"

I would give a qualified agreement to Hawkings... the scientific method works at expanding our knowledge about the objective world. But science itself does not always work. This interview is proof of that. Doctors used science to predict that Hawkins would be dead 43 years ago. They were wrong. People can use observation and reason and still come to the completely wrong conclusions. This does not make science useless, but Hawkings should have qualified his statement to say science usually works. Or rather, it works more reliably than other methods (revelation for instance) for discovering things about the objective world.

Also, I think the view that all religion is based on authority is a very narrow view of religion and more accurately describes fundamentalists and dogmatism. Furthermore, I'd disagree with him that somehow science is not based on authority. It absolutely is. It has to be. If it wasn't, any crackpot who did a study and got some result that disagreed with scientific consensus would get to have their results accepted immediately.

But there's a huge downside to that--new scientific ideas can take decades before they finally overturn prior "consensus." Adenoidectomies (getting your tonsils out) are one example. Scientific consensus in the early 1900s was that everybody should get their tonsils removed--and nearly everybody did. It took nearly 30 years for researchers to turn the tide and convince doctors that removing the tonsils could actually do more harm than good. Meanwhile, during those 30 years, based on their authority as doctors, surgeons unnecessarily removed the tonsils of millions of kids.

All this is to say simply that science is not some magic bullet. I guess I get a bit annoyed when people try to glorify science. Science isn't perfect, but it's the most reliable method we have for exploring the objective world. That's all you can say about it. And really, that's all that needs to be said.

>> ^Farhad2000:

The problem is you can't do that. You can't quantify that at all.
It's like Big Pharam, you spend billions of dollars in R&D to find the next possible pill to alleviate heart problems and suddenly you create Viagra.
>> ^chilaxe:
I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).
Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.



Exactly. his entire point is that we need explorers precisely because we dont know what they'll find out, thats what exploration is. It is a widely believed myth that the people who were against Columbus' attempt to sail around the world to reach India(which was the original plan for the exploration) all thought the earth was flat, they didnt actually think so, their main argument was that the distance would be too great, and as such they were completely right, not only did they figure that Columbus wouldnt make it, so the investment in the ship would be wasted, but even if he DID make it all the way to India, the distance would still make commercial traffic unfeasible. And they were actually right on all points. The entire beauty and nature of exploration, however, is that you can bump into America on the way over there, and there is no way to tell you this in advance. To tell you in advance what the return on the investment in exploring is, we need to explore.. well, you get the point.

OMG! Finally, a Unified Theory of Feline Angular Momentum. Now we can finally explore the outer reaches of the universe!

Right now the only reason we are bound to a three dimensional reality is that our bodies are bound there. When we begin to shed our biology our reality is boundless.

It does pose a question that if we can make realities that are as real or more real that what we experience now, why should we want to explore this reality? Maybe we shouldn't. Until then, it's a good place to start.