Yes, it's very good. No movie could ever hope to approach 2001 so they just told a straightforward hard sci-fi story that follows the events of 2001. Somewhat empty and lacking in the awe of the first movie and the book version of 2010. But, good space exploration and probably the highest number of non-battle space shots in any movie besides 2001. I have it on blu-ray, makes a great double bill with Sunshine (or 2001).

Speakig of which, what do you guys think of this news that apparently all galaxies might be flowing towards some impossibly distant point... they're calling it "dark flow." Fucking interesting.

FUND SPACE EXPLORATION AND TRAVEL!!!!

>> ^gtjwkq:
Banks are given money voluntarily , that means they'll tend to receive less money if they're careless with it (reputation?). You might ask, "So why would banks be careless with money given by govt? Don't they know that govt might not give them more money if they're careless too?".

It's not really about the usual libertarian focus on voluntary vs. authority, it's about accountability. No one in government gets their job without either being elected, or being employed by someone who was elected. If tax money is misspent, you can elect someone else.

But I also think there are plenty of people who excel at their profession because they like to be good at what they do, not because they think their ass is on the line if they screw up.

I also question whether people who're primarily motivated by bonuses given for high short-term investment returns have the right kind of incentives.

But I have no control over that at a bank.

Well, just look at the bailouts. Govt gave these banks billions even after they lost copious amounts of it. Either these banks are evil geniuses or, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I'd say there is some collusion between govt and big investment banks, wouldn't you agree?

I'd say a little of both. I doubt the big asset bubble was a plan that the banks and government colluded on. I think the banks screwed up, and I think the strength of their lobbying arm made sure government gave them money with no strings attached, rather than following a more progressive path (temporarily nationalizing them FDIC-style, or folding the same volume of money into the social safety net and letting them fail, or just giving the money to single-home homeowners to bail them out, and by proxy bail out their banks).

I'm in a wait-and-see mode with the bank bailout. Government spent it all to get stock in these banks, which it will later sell. It may wind up being that the way they did it will actually bring more money in than it spent initially, like what happened with the S&L crisis.

Profit is not something strictly selfish (well, actually it is, but profit is usually obtained by providing services to others, which is where the "selfless" magic behind profit lies), a growing economy eventually allows itself to have longer and longer-term goals while still being bound by a profit-seeking mentality, even if we're talking highways or space exploration.

I understand the free market theory, and I actually see that kind of virtuous business cycle as being a goal I share. I just don't think it's possible to have a market that is both unregulated and beneficent to ordinary people.

I also don't think we can count on charities to take on the problems of the poor adequately, especially not in economic downturns that's tightening everyone's budget. People are too selfish to really worry about it.

You said, regarding the Fed's expansion of the money supply:

Austrians say it will cause hyperinflation, keynesians will either say "yay, it worked!" or "hyperinflation only happened because the Fed didn't expand the money supply enough and didn't save enough failing banks".

Actually, unless something drastic changes, Keynesians will say "holy shit, how did we get inflation?"

I'll be writing off Keynesians as being quacks if we wind up in a situation with high unemployment and high inflation, unless we have some sort of supply shock (e.g. OPEC decides to stop selling oil to us), or we wind up scaring the world into dumping the dollar before we recover.

Supply shocks aren't really predictable, but there are ways to measure the international community's confidence in the dollar, and there aren't any warning signs at this point.

If employment comes roaring back, and GDP reverts to trend, then we'll be calling for the Fed to contract the money supply to stave off inflation.

Inflation produces easy money for the govt at the expense of everyone's wealth denominated in that currency. It's the ultimate stealth taxing tool: The govt/Fed just prints money and we all get poorer, and they get to give that money to those who are politically connected.
It's like an upside-down redistribution of wealth, everyone gets slowly robbed (the poor getting hit the hardest for having less resources) and usually the ones at the top get the most benefit first, specially if they're in bed with govt.

I agree with this assessment of the issues that can and do crop up. I disagree that the Fed intentionally causes periods of high inflation in order to explicitly to benefit their well-connected friends.

Govt, as always, gets a free pass and points its finger at capitalism, business owners, the market, banks, foreign lenders, ANYTHING and people will buy it if they're keynesian, statist or stupid enough.

Slurs against people like myself aside, I think you misunderstand our position. It's not that government gets a free pass, it's that a corrupt government happens because of businesses influence.

Peter Schiff has used the analogy that the crisis was like a teacher leaving kids alone with a bunch of candy, and then later comes back and finds the kids have made themselves sick. I agree with the analogy -- business is like a bunch of misbehaved kids, and the government, like the teacher, is supposed to be the responsible adult who keeps them in check. The cure isn't to fire the teacher and let the kids have the keys to the candy supply, the cure is to fire the teacher and hire a responsible one.

I guess what I don't understand is why you would trust government with nuclear missiles, police, courts, etc. but not control of currency.

I want to end fraud, corruption, and abuse, but I don't think big business is somehow immune to it, and I don't see how telling government to generally take a hike would cure it.

I think it's a symptom of human nature itself that people are always going to be seeking advantage, fair or not, by any means necessary. I want to empower altruistic people who represent the people's interests, and aren't afraid to push back against corporate interests to make sure people are treated fairly.

I cringe at the entire conservative "we must make policy about maximizing business growth, period" philosophy of governance. Mine is "we must make business growth beneficial to society".

This recession has been long in the making, but the housing bubble, in a nutshell, was caused by the moral hazards generated by federal institutions taking an interest in the real estate market and the Fed keeping artificially low interest rates for so long. Everything else you mentioned is mostly a consequence.

I hear this a lot from Austro-libertarians. If this were true, banks should never work right, either. The people making the investment choices, and choices about loans are not the people who own the banks.

I can't tell whether you're terrible at making analogies or very good at making terrible analogies.

Banks are given money *voluntarily*, that means they'll tend to receive less money if they're careless with it (reputation?). You might ask, "So why would banks be careless with money given by govt? Don't they know that govt might not give them more money if they're careless too?".

Well, just look at the bailouts. Govt gave these banks billions even after they lost copious amounts of it. Either these banks are evil geniuses or, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I'd say there is some collusion between govt and big investment banks, wouldn't you agree?

The most risk they have to bear is getting fired, and often they get lavish severance packages even when they are fired, and are almost immediately rehired by another bank.

I agree, your accusations about the banking sector being inefficient are very plausible. Like I said, they're in bed together, govt and banks, it's probably the most highly regulated sector of the economy. The more regulated a sector of the economy is, the higher its costs, the bigger its potential for corruption and the worse its services are going to be.

I also think government spending is best directed at things that are unlikely to turn a direct profit, but are useful for humanitarian purposes, or a general positive impact on the economy (e.g. infrastructure).

I understand where you're coming from, but I still think govt should mostly stay out of that too. Most people are led to consider profit a bad thing, when concern with profit is what's actually more humanitarian than pursuing anything with alleged "humanitarian" goals and taxpayer money. Profit is not something strictly selfish (well, actually it is, but profit is usually obtained by providing services to others, which is where the "selfless" magic behind profit lies), a growing economy eventually allows itself to have longer and longer-term goals while still being bound by a profit-seeking mentality, even if we're talking highways or space exploration.

What Bernanke believes is that the Fed should have known better and reacted by massively expanding the money supply to stave off deflation, and rescuing the failing banks.

I know. Even though he acknowledged that the Fed helped cause it, he gathered the wrong conclusion: That the Fed didn't do enough. Well, he's been putting those beliefs in action so we'll all get to see how that works out real soon.

Austrians say it will cause hyperinflation, keynesians will either say "yay, it worked!" or "hyperinflation only happened because the Fed didn't expand the money supply enough and didn't save enough failing banks".

We won't solve the Austrian-keynesian blame game over the Great Depression here, specially if you're saying Austrians caused it, so I'd like to move on.

What if we bring inflation into this discussion, because it best illustrates a basic disagreement we probably have. Keynesians embrace inflation as a tool, which is why I consider keynesianism an ideological tool of the state. The govt loves inflation and it will never openly admit to that love, or admit to using it A LOT, because people obviously don't like inflation.

Inflation can only be effectively used when the govt has a monopoly over the currency, which, to me, explains why you're so in favor of central banks and opposed to parallel currencies: So people can't flee from inflation.

Inflation produces easy money for the govt at the expense of everyone's wealth denominated in that currency. It's the ultimate stealth taxing tool: The govt/Fed just prints money and we all get poorer, and they get to give that money to those who are politically connected.

It's like an upside-down redistribution of wealth, everyone gets slowly robbed (the poor getting hit the hardest for having less resources) and usually the ones at the top get the most benefit first, specially if they're in bed with govt.

Govt, as always, gets a free pass and points its finger at capitalism, business owners, the market, banks, foreign lenders, ANYTHING and people will buy it if they're keynesian, statist or stupid enough.

Hey, No worries. I went looking for something specific on the Apollo lunar landing and couldn't find it, ran out of time and ended up posting that video by default. I thought it was interesting but I wasn't making any claims either way. I was just "putting it out there. As it had received 3 down-votes by morning, I've discarded it. Like I said, I wasn't judging it one way or another. The science tag was because space exploration is based on science and the lies tag was because the video was calling the landing a lie.

I suppose the argument is mute now though, so have a great day!



In reply to this comment by mauz15:
I'm confused, did you post this and tagged it as lies because you know the whole hoax thing is false, or because you believe it was a hoax and think the landing is a lie?

if you posted this because of the former, then could you please remove it from the science channel?

If you posted because of the latter, are you saying this is bullshit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_Experiment and since 1969 dozens of astronomers have been in observatories pretending they shoot a laser to the moon and the signal bounces back? really, are you telling me there are scientists wasting their time shooting lasers at the moon and the computers that read the signal lie to them?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'space, exploration, cryovolcano, NASA, spectrometry' to 'space, exploration, cryovolcano, NASA, spectrometry, water, ice, moon, saturn' - edited by my15minutes

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

The "how dare you talk about this- don't you realize people are starving?" argument is akin to godwining a thread. It automatically trumps any point of view - but also shuts down the discussion.

I hear it used mostly when people discuss the merits of space exploration.

First off, I never said we were first. And I never said anything about only we can go to space.

Secondly, if you actually watched the entire video and yet somehow feel the need to defend the things those announcers said (which was the reason behind my post in the first place) that says a lot more about you than it does about me. I doubt you even listened to the whole thing.

Beyond that, I don't know what crawl you're talking about. NASA has done some pretty amazing things since the 60's .. too numerous to list here, besides the fact that the first privately funded rocket to reach orbit was just launched yesterday by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) which is an American company.

Lastly, I have no idea what you're talking about with the money/war bullshit. I guess you support them invading Tibet too.

mg, I am assuming he discussed it with lunkwill, the owner of the spacy channel. Here's his description of his channel, don't know if that's gonna change...

The Clouds and Beyond
by lunkwill

Astronomy and aviation. Space and space exploration. There and getting there. The universe and the attempts of Icarus. Just about anything that can fly is welcome here.

The odd psychedelic clip regarding space will find its way here, as well as things related to aviation that are firmly rooted on the ground (eg: ATC).

I move that the news media start being "fair and balanced" by letting us hear "both sides of the debate" every time they talk about topics that include:

Space Exploration
Global trade routes
Seasons
Time Zones
The Horizon
Sunrise/Sunset
Tides
Eclipses

They missed a good opportunity with one of those words. Instead of Di plomacy, it should have been DIP lomacy.

As for space exploration, we definitely need more funding for it, but I think it should be more privatized. Give incentives for institutions and companies to create innovative designs. As an ex NASA employee, I can attest to their waste of resources/money, but then again, what government agency is run really efficiently?

I dislike McCain as much as the next liberal... but, I actually enjoy space exploration and the thought of going to mars.

Nice video. It is interesting to see how far we have come and how far we still have to go in the field of space exploration.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Space exploration, Iran, Satellite' to 'Space exploration, Iran, Satellite, rocket' - edited by kronosposeidon

Now how about it being taught in schools? It contradicts the Bible, so are you going to deny it being taught? What about other stuff that contradicts the bible? Are you going to make gay people illegal? Stop space exploration, stop the search for extra terrestrial life, it all contradicts the bible.

God these people are too stupid to run the damn country.

The people best suited to running countries and leading men don't want to, and the people who want to are always least suited.

Semi-offtopic rant over.

harry - speaking for england/britain and what i know of it, it isn't an issue to us. We accept that evolution is extremely likely to have been true, and move on with it. We don't even seem to have archaic and vehement christians shaking their crucifixes at us and telling us that we're wicked for believing in evolution. Most of the christians i know believe in evolution, and if i said to them "what about it contradicting the bible?" they'd just say something like "well god may have put it there to test us for all you know, but i admit that based on the evidence we have evolution is highly likely."

They'd also probably say something about the bible having been written by humans, and it having been subject to translation and manipulation over the years, but the core of it is what's important and true.

We just don't have it. No big fat psychopaths who scream about "TEH DARK SIDE!!1111" or whatever it was. I forget cos i watched Star Wars straight afterwards.