A copy of you is not you, even if it thinks it is. There could be any number of those, all with that illusion, of course.
Posts by Brian Hall
34 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
NASA: ALIENS and NEW EARTHS will be ours inside 20 years
Boffins find MEXICAN WAVE pattern in random climate wobbles
Hubble spots ALIEN NAVY world – and it's pelted with GLASS RAIN
Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!
Microsoft researchers build spam filter for HIV
Radio hams pick up Mars rover Curiosity's signals
Soot warming 'maybe bigger than greenhouse gases' - NASA
Inversions
It's all so bass-ackward!
My POV:
Warming good, Cooling bad (historically speaking).
CO2 trivial ( arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v4 ), which is unfortunate since we might need some warming quite soon.
Big Bux and Power Plays have driven the Green/Climate agenda from early on. It is now irredeemably compromised.
Boffins build World's tiniest 'laser'
Obama: 1m electric cars on US roads by 2015, please
Tesla Power
Tesla Motors should have that many on the road by then on its own. So far, selling the Roadster and even hotter Sportster, and later this year the Model S sedan, and a year or two later a family 5-seater -- all 100% electric, 250MPG, with ranges from 150-250 miles per charge-up, increasing rapidly as battery tech improves ( it could jump a factor of 10 in the next few years as nanowire fabrication takes off ). Cost about 2¢ (1p) per mile, all-in, to drive (assuming use of off-peak reduced power rates for charge-ups).
Final Arthur C Clarke novel on the way
Microsoft targets online Office bundle at US cheapskates
Boffins invent 42GB DVD
Brit firm levitates floating chair
Thais rate rat 'better than chicken'
Alcohol makes you smart enough to study it
Aussie scam artist rides bank computer glitch to $9m overdraft
Gunplay fingered for internet slowdown
Waste computer edict finally hits UK
Teenagers prefer mobiles to sex
Government clears road for human hybrid embryos
Met staffer arrested over Al Qaeda terror report leak
Will bloggers get the blame for DoH mess?
Friendly Fire
There's a really nasty pattern to this kind of thing. Concerned employee or user probes problem, reports difficulty, is put up against the wall and shot.
One would think that the Goal is to Not Know, and if you force Them to Know, you are a Violator and must be Punished.
The End of this Road is Ignorance Reigns Supreme!
All Hail Ignorance!
Scientist says nerve gas nastier than you thought
Microsoft satisfaction rates slip
No end in sight for Vista's Long Goodbye
Gutsy eBayer touts 'Royal Marine surrender kit'
Canada announces monster solar plant
Identity
Diego, that was addressed to DAVID, who proposed growing and burning trees, at 17:06 GMT.
scum;
actually, pondscum is great stuff, and can do wonders for the atmosphere -- and can even generate hydrogen when forced to operate anaerobically (without access to oxygen).
I actually suspect that there is a complex set of interactions and "triggers", here. Detailed climate records are showing more and more "fast flips", which seem to be the result of hitting tipping points in combinations of variables. It may well be that we can stimulate or avoid some of the nastier possibilities by our behaviour, within the overall patterns of "natural" forces.
As an interesting example, some have suggested that the startup of agriculture 4-8,000 years ago may well have aborted or delayed a "scheduled" major advance of ice sheets. But of course you can get too much of a good thing. The other major consideration is that "normal" is what we're used to and adapted to -- right now. Even if that's not an actual usual geological climate normal. So we may be trying and hoping to preserve a very unlikely and precarious balance or pattern that we just happen to be living through.
Not much to spit and fume about there, I know. Sorry.
Picky, picky
Garcia;
Sugar cane is a far simpler crop to use to generate alcohol than corn. The additional processing for corn, especially since so far only the kernels can be used, pretty much wipes out any eco-benefits. Hopes are being pinned on developing yeast or bacteria that can break down stalks and leaves to get at the much more tightly bound starches etc. there. But no luck yet.
David;
Burn, you said? Going to trap the CO2 somehow, or just let the good ol' atmosphere reprocess it, like usual?
My preference is to put solar panels on the Moon and microwave the energy back to Earth.
Dell finally switches on PC network in Glasgow schools
UK airline pilots spot giant UFO
Time and distance
Simon, I think you have to be a bit more explicit and basic for anyone with jazz' evident level of education and comprehension.
Jazz, light-years measure distance. 1 light year is the distance light will travel in one year. The nearest star, e.g., is just over 4 light-years away, or over 20 trillion (10^12, or million million) miles. So if you travel at 1/10 light speed, or 18,600 miles per second (about 67 million mph), it will take you 40 years to get there. OK?
B.
Engineers write defence against aliens manual
Pellegrino's Postulate
In 'Flying to Valhalla' (Valhalla, if you recall, is an afterlife of eternal joyful warfare, to which only warriors are admitted), Dr. Charles Pellegrino reveals all. The predator hypothesis says that any dominant race must have evolved as a predator, and therefore will prefer to pre-emptively attack any threat. It will therefore assume any other technological civilization will have the same impulse. It will therefore strike first; what this means is that it will launch a near-C (~.92 C seems likely) missile or two down the throat of any EM source it detects.
These are planet-busters or at the least eco-busters, and can be detected coming in only by their gamma shock wave. But they follow the shock wave closely; when you see a signal from 1 ly away, the missile is actually (1-.92) = 1/12 of that distance, or 1 light-month. When you see its signal at 5 light weeks, it's about 3 light-days away. When you see it 1 light day away (about 4x as far as the far edge of the Kuiper Belt), it's actually about 2 light-hours out. When you see it 2 light-hours out, it's actually about 5 light minutes away. When you see it 5 light-minutes away, it's actually about 13 seconds away, just enough time to bend over and kiss your ass good-bye!
Our broadcasts are 50-100 ly out by now (depending on what detection threshold you prefer), so any techno-race within 25-50 ly may have launched long enough ago to have their missiles arriving any day, now. Unless, of course, space has been almost completely successfully sterilized for some distance out by one surviving (?) planet. [There won't necessarily be one; since there's no "dodging", two last planets could launch at each other any time within the period between older-society launches and the arrival of those missiles. If younger-society gets its launch away before dying, older is doomed, too.]
So, we are either the last because everyone else has wiped each other out, or our package(s) are in transit, or, we must hope, no one is close enough to have detected us. [This is a faint hope, however. Even a very distant society, if they develop technology before we kill them will likely have plenty of time to launch.] Of course, our only rational course is to tool up our own near-C missiles and get ready to launch as soon as we detect a planet with even the potential to spawn someone like us. If we wait, they might [and in any case will likely] catch up enough to launch before we can get them.
In a universe of paranoid predators, non-paranoia is insanity, you see. If there even MIGHT be such a predator race out there (even just one), we must destroy any civilized or potentially civilized species we detect. So must they. I.e., since detecting EM is far too late for any except nearby planets, we must aggressively search out planets with life and techno-society potential and either sterilize them or knock out any potentially sentient animals that have evolved. So, PASSIVE SETI is very important. Sending signals out is suicide. Only instant pre-emption is safe and sane.
:D