Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, September 30, 2022
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73 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Reuters published its full report, America’s Throwaway Spies: How the CIA failed Iranian informants in its secret war with Tehran, on Thursday.
ETA: reading the reuters piece it’s even worse.
It seems even the Geico gecko wants a union.
She needs a union.
Doctor, Army spouse accused of trying to provide service member medical records to Russia–
Elon Musk trying to kill even more people with his silly overpriced vehicles.
Liz Truss to hold emergency talks with OBR after failing to calm markets
But Liz is gonna stay the course:
@OzarkHillbilly: More from John Crace: Half-witted, reckless Librium Liz may be even worse than May and Johnson
Kamikwasi Kwarteng, I love it.
Next day replies.
@Jamie
In his Worldwar* alternate history books, Turtledove kind of tackles the logistics of the invading aliens. they brought all their supplies with them, and are running out. They try to manufacture some on parts of Earth they’ve conquered, with very limited success.
@dazedandconfused
The one thing we know about alien intelligences is that we know none yet. For all we know there’s a very powerful one converting all sentient beings to the One True Religion, and exterminating those who won’t comply.
Also, I’ve been thinking more about potential life in other planets. the problem there is like the one above: we know of no other planets with life. Further, we know little of other solar systems. So combine the two:
How likely is life to arise and thrive in a planet without a magnetic field to shield it from some types of solar radiation, and how many planets otherwise suitable for life have magnetic fields?
The problem is most rocky planets and satellites in our Solar system don’t have one. Earth does. Mercury and Ganymede have one, but they’re very weak compared to Earth’s.
The gas giants do have magnetic fields, but we’ve detected no life in them as yet.
*Brief synopsis: alien invaders rudely interrupt humanity during WWII.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Every cloud has a silver lining, eh?
Personally I think the UK needs a conservative party, possibly even this Conservative Party.
But this iteration of it needs radical reconstruction: the UKIP influx marginalised, and the One Nation/Realist groups back in.
Many of you probably already follow the Ukraine conflict on a daily basis this but, if not, I recommend a daily look at this site: Institute for the Study of War: Ukraine Conflict Updates.
Each of the bullet statements below have a more detailed narrative available if you wish a more in-depth analysis.
This is put out daily around 1930 ET.
Uh huh.
So does the US. Unfortunately, neither one does just now.
@Kathy:
Problem of a lot of “Earth invasion” fiction is that it just doesn’t allow for the scale of differential technical capability between an culture capable of insterstellar travel and contemporary humanity.
And the odds (seriously, massive probability) that such a culture would be millions of years older than humans.
Classic example being Independence Day:
If said aliens wanted the resources of the Earth, why not just snaffle the asteroid belt, which is already nicely broken up?
If they were dead set on destroying Earth, for some odd reason, just grab one cometary body, accelerate it to interstellar velocity and SMACK!
Ah, but people say: what if they want to occupy Earth?
But why should a spacefaring culture want to occupy inhabited planets at all?
And if a mega-years advanced culture wants Earth, they could pretty certainly make it a cakewalk.
One of the few fiction works to address this is actually Footfall, by Niven and Pournelle.
They solve the problem of “non-advanced aliens” by having them be inheritors of a dead culture’s technology, so they have interstellar capability but are otherwise little beyond human level capabilities.
They have not evolved science and technology themselves, just copied a sequence of “how to rebuild a civilisation” manuals with minimal understanding of the underlying principles.
Plus, they are, in some ways rather stupid, inflexible and extremely instinct-bound, with a herd based society and psychology
And lack physical dexterity.
IIRC the Fithp were supposed to be descended from genetically modified pets of the extinct Predecessors
IMO opinion one of the few alien antagonists that actually made sense in terms of both attacking in the first place, and being beatable.
@Kathy:
I’m a big fan of those Turtledove books. They were internally consistent fun literary candy. The thing I didn’t like about his writing was the constantly repeating stuff. Oh, so and so has X quality? You mean its different than the 500 times you’ve told us this in the last 6 books in this series. We get it.
I wan to say Mad Vlad just dug himself in deeper, but he actually has a good chance of walking away, eventually, from the war with some new territories.
The world, and most of Europe in particular, will tolerate a repressive state that is a source of valuable resources. But not a repressive state that is intent on expanding by force, no matter what valuable resources it holds.
@JohnSF:
One of the worst SciFi movies I’ve paid to see…
I did read Footfall, but I don’t recall the origin of the Fithp. I do remember they were rather dim-witted and inflexible.
Overall, yes, the reasons for aliens invading Earth are very unsatisfactory. Once you can travel across the stars, resources of all kinds are plentiful and cheap outside of habitable planets.
But, suppose habitable planets with a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere and a magnetic field, ones where you can just live on without sealed off habitats or domes, like Earth, are very very rare. Say there are maybe under a million of them in the galaxy, and only a handful within reach of even advanced aliens.
That might be reason enough to take them over, then exterminate the native population so your people can move in and enjoy it. A mass comet/asteroid strike would damage the ecosystem, which would take decades or centuries to recover. Mass nuclear bombardment would be even worse.
Then there’s ideology. Germany did not need to conquer most of Europe in order to be a prosperous nation. But see what nazi ideology did to it. Ditto communist ideology in Russia. America kind of stopped after gobbling up Mexico’s lands, of which they could have taken more had they wanted to. The UK had to trade its empire for the survival of the core in WWII and its aftermath.
You could have something similar with religion, too. We don’t lack examples of powerful states making war and imposing religion on conquered peoples.
@Beth:
The repetition, and the later penchant for recreating historical events with different settings and characters, is what turned me off Turtledove for good.
At that, Worldwar remains pretty good. The sequel, Colonization, not so much.
@OzarkHillbilly: Mississippi is corrupt to the core.
Mississippi welfare fraud: Former MDHS director John Davis faces new charges
Bennie Thompson asks DOJ to investigate former Mississippi governor over missing TANF funds
The Mississippi welfare fraud involving Brett Favre, explained
@Kathy:
True for a near-par civilisation.
But starfarers are unlikely that bothered about habs or domes rather than planets.
In fact, they might be preferable, due to environment/biology reason, maybe.
And a mega-year old one: want a planet? Just make one.
Take a while, but that sort of civ. will have got used to thinking long-term, or it wouldn’t have GOT to the long-term.
No magnetic field?
Put up a orbital shell of charged grids, or somesuch.
A mega-year culture is going to be one way outside our contexts, even if you rule out handwavium tech.
@JohnSF: @OzarkHillbilly: I’m not so sure. I think that both countries need to have a party that concerns itself with how government action affects those in the bottom half of the society, but as to whether that party needs to be conservative, I’m not sold.
@Scott: “In 2018, The Mississippi Department of Human Resources (MDHS) received $135 million in TANF funds, however $77 million were misdirected.”
See? The conservatives are right again. Governments shouldn’t be given money because they’ll just embezzle most of it. The fact that conservative governments are the ones doing it only makes matters worse. If you can’t trust conservatives, who love the country and want to do what’s best for the citizens, to channel the money well, how can you possibly trust lefties who hate the country and want to destroy the society (not to mention being willing to trade morally pure failure for morally corrupt success–like embezzling over half of the TANF funds)?
@OzarkHillbilly: why? Why, really, do we need a “conservative” party? Serious question. What have Tories or Republicans contributed? Keep in mind that I’m the guy with the obsession about dictionary “conservative” =\= political “conservative.
@JohnSF:
Again, we know nothing about alien intelligences, much less ones with millions of years of civilization. For all we know (spoiler alert), they’ll get us to fight for them to prove them right.
About the one assumption we can make is aliens who can build a civilization need to cooperate effectively with each other. This does not make them peaceful or benign. Exhibit A: humans do cooperate effectively with each other and do build civilizations. We can be peaceful and benign, but all too often we’re not.
Has anyone ever used peanut butter to cook in place of butter or vegetable oil?
I got the notion of adding peanut butter to rice as it cooks, but then I thought I can also/instead use it to lightly fry the rice before cooking it (I do that with oil most times). the end dish is rice with stir fried snow peas, soybean sprouts, celery, bell pepper, and mushrooms.
Well, here’s a new form of representative government to ponder: single-seat district with collective candidacies.
The idea is a group of people run for one seat, and will divide the duties of fundraising, campaigning, and eventually governing.
Cue up the latest Profiles in Courage eventShutdown averted: House passes spending bill to fund federal government through Dec. 16
We’re never having deliberately-funded government again except when whackos elect the GQP to misrun things. Good time to be old. Fewer “shutdown crisis averted” events to go through.
@Kathy:
Given the cosmic speed limit of ridiculously slow light, I believe that if space travel is at all feasible it’s along the lines of quantum linking which we seem to have recently proved is real. The nut of it is that at the quantum level space-time does not exist. Our brains are not structured to grasp this, but it appears that at the quantum level the farthest galaxy is no further away than the tip of one’s nose.
This follows the theory of space travel in Dune, actually. “Folding space” as in moving across space “without moving at all”. This also fits a common feature of UFO sightings, acceleration beyond our understood physics followed by instant disappearance could be how ships transitioning into another dimension could appear to an outside observer.
Conquest would be a rather silly thing to bother with for those to whom the entire universe is their oyster, and judging by the history of life on our planet the chances of happening upon a nitrogen/water planet at the point in time where it harbors something like us as we are today would seem to be exceedingly small, so why would they equip themselves for war? The odds they are driven by curiosity are much, much larger.
@Kathy: Haven’t done it (peanut allergy) but imagine that one would need to saute at low temperature to avoid burning the solids. Maybe even lower than butter, which has a much higher oil to solids ratio (I would assume).
@Kathy: Back when I was still reading science fiction there was a series by Fred Saberhagen, Berserkers, that postulated a interstellar threat by machines determined to wipe out all (other) living things. Of course, this goal does not require landing on a planet. An alien force might be motivated to conquer others without a rational reason; humans seem to act irrationally a lot; why shouldn’t aliens?
Random musings…
1. Loving “Andor”. It’s a very different take on Star Wars IP. Disney+
2. John Ridley’s “Five Days at Memorial” is f*cking amazing, and I’m only on episode 5. Don’t watch it if you don’t want to get frustrated, angry, and sad at the lack of humanity from some mixed in with the heroic efforts of others. AppleTV+
3. “Welcome to Wrexham” is a must watch if you’re any sort of football (soccer) fan. FX and Hulu
4. “The Patient” is gonna win some awards. Hulu
Happy Friday, all.
@gVOR08:
I’ll chime in on this before I head out for the weekend.
1) To accurately represent the will of the people. Not everybody is liberal or progressive. Whether you agree with them or not, they deserve to have a (proportional) voice in government.
2) To have a party that looks towards fiscally conservative policies (e.g., Golden Fleece Awards), and asks “Do we really need this? Or are we just rushing ahead blindly?”
3) To balance the rights and needs of individuals against the “best intentions” of a “nanny state”*, and promote a free market (within reasonable protections and restrictions).
4) To present counter arguments to progressive policies, even if just to make the progressives think about the reasons, responsibilities, and repercussions.
I would note that the current Republican party is failing at all of these.
=============
* Yes, outlawing large sodas is the workings of a nanny state.
@JohnSF: There’s a guy over on YouTube that runs a series: “Sci-Fi civilisations too stupid to actually exist”. Wonderful British snark. I ran into one of his presentations when I was Dalek-searching. It was a hoot.
Anyway, he’s got one on the “Harvesters” (the aliens from Independence Day I and II). Again, hilarious. Definitely too dumb to exist in reality.
@gVOR08: Checks and balances. We have a liberal party. A conservative party can apply the brakes to our excesses. And we do have them. I like to read sane conservative arguments, it makes me think about what we are trying to do and whether it can actually succeed.
Unfortunately, the GOP is completely whacked out looney tunes. Anything they say is imbecilic, and everything they do is just plain crazy. They are an active danger to society.
@Grumpy realist: Does he do an episode on humans? I can see lots of ways that we could wipe ourselves out, and am a little surprised we haven’t yet.
Gotta point out that the Golden Fleece awards were a con. A lot of the things Proxmire singled out were really quite valuable and only proved what an ignoramus he was. The one that sticks in my mind was a scientific study done by a PHD candidate which centered around the anal temperatures of Alaskan sled dogs in winter. I don’t recall specifically what was his thesis but his work was used by NASA in building space suits.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think I’ll experiment a bit in the morning while making breakfast.
With the caveat that a lot depends on the actual definition of “conservative” being used, I would add a 5th reason to Mu’s list: to argue the virtues of incremental and cautious change in a country of 300+ million, and to remind people that unintentional consequences are a big deal. Or perhaps that is the more generic purpose of the 4 points he brings up.
Note today’s Republican party (and apparently Tories as well) are not “conservative” in any way by the definitions Mu and I seem to be using. They are completely reactionary-resistant to ANY change that doesn’t immediately and obviously benefit them (and not always then), ideologically blinded so badly that they can’t imagine and/or don’t care about unforeseen consequences even when reality keeps slapping them in the face (see, the British pound this week), and placing far more priority on socially conservative beliefs than any rational theory of conservative government would.
I should add that, yes, I agree the reactionary elements I complain about in today’s Republican and Tory parties above have always been present to one degree or another. That does not mean, however, that conservatism as a whole has no purpose. I would argue that like most things the amount to which the reactionary factions are in control is a pendulum, and that today virtually none of the useful elements of a conservative party are present. At least I can HOPE we are at or near peak-reactionary. So when I say or agree with comments along the lines of “the US needs a Conservative party” I am basically wishing for the conservative pendulum to swing the other way.
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s pretty typical for conservatives in my experience. They love getting upset over stuff they don’t understand because they can’t be bothered to take a deeper look. Sometimes once you explain to them the long form reasoning they have an “ah ha” moment. Most of the time they seem to have an “ah ha” moment only to rant about the same thing months later…
It really does feel like the only motivation they have here (my area at least) anymore is grievance/anger related.
@dazedandconfused:
I’ve heard of the notion that spacetime is an emergent property of quantum systems, but that the distance between stuff, even quantum-level stuff like particles, is not real.
I do know it’s so far impossible to transmit information from a distance through entangled particles.
As to folding space, the idea there is to actually fold space, the way general relativity says gravity deforms the fabric of space. It’s and old staple in science fiction, and even how the Enterprise zooms around the galaxy.
@Gustopher:
That’s what I thought too 🙂
@Mu Yixiao:
1: You’re accepting Republican framing of “will of the people” as some basic racism plus abortion, gays, CRT, grooming, etc. which are mostly issues Republicans created, or immigration which Republicans refuse to deal with in any realistic way so they can exploit it. And do we really need a party to represent racists?
2: Republicans (and Tories) standing for fiscal conservatism? Really? OK, as a partisan tool against Ds in power, sure. But when they have power, as the Tories do at the moment?
3. “Free markets were a liberal creation. You can find edge cases like giant sodas (which really are bad), but how many nations like Ds pushed it?
4: Republicans have largely banned expertise, for which they should be banned from serious policy discussion.
You concede that Republicans are failing at all these. If you want to argue for the virtues of some ideal conservative party, OK. In the real world what use are Republicans? Yes, there needs to be a loyal opposition to prevent the dominant party from becoming corrupt, but a far left part opposed to center left Dems would do nicely.
@OzarkHillbilly: You’re also arguing we need a valid second party, not necessarily a rightist party. A nice solid center right party would also do.
@OzarkHillbilly:
@Matt:
There’s a lot of stuff in math that seems exceedingly arcane and plain weird, which has practical applications. Things like topology, for example. I vaguely recall reading a piece on Discover magazine about the math of sphere packing in various spatial dimensions. I forget how or why, but the problem of how many spheres touche when bunched together has something to do with transmitting data.
And you often find other such weird, unexpected stuff in science, particularly in biology.
@EddieInCA: “1. Loving “Andor”. It’s a very different take on Star Wars IP. Disney+”
I’ve watched the first episode and know I have to go back because it’s Tony Gilroy. But I think I’m realizing there’s just nothing in the Star Wars universe I care about.
On the other hand, I think She-Hulk Attorney At Law continues to be one of the most delightful things I’ve seen in ages. It dares to be silly, and has the chops to pull it off.
Still waiting on the two dragon shows. Going to let all the episodes pile up before I feel compelled to check them out. And by that time the world will have stopped yapping about them, and I can just focus on the series themselves, if they turn out to be worth the time…
@Kathy:
Of course alian psychologies and societies are unknowable.
But i suspect capacity for endurance over a megayears will place a premium on rationality, curiosity and a degree of, for want of a better word, empathy.
And that a multi-million year old culture will “speciate”: diverge to an extent you get multiple alien cultures and biologies even if you started with just one origin point.
And whether mono-specific or multi-specific in origin, a diversified mega culture is liable to not be a benign environment for an irrational agressive/expansionist group to survive in.
Someone older is liable to sit on the head a a juvenile irritant.
(Which is a good reason for us to learn to mind our manners).
@JohnSF:
Sounds like you’ve been reading Larry Niven, and in particular the second Ringworld novel.
But he may be right. If people settle different environments, they may evolve into a different species as they adapt. Our descendants might find out through experience, should we last so long.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Perhaps both class interest as social-psychology.
When it come to class, I’m Brit-European enough that my default is the “conservative” party tends to the interest of the wealthier, more established types.
“Lower class conservatism” is still more an American thing (though less so than it used to be).
American Republicans are a VERY odd variety of “conservative” in world terms.
I’ve often argued Republicans are in many respects a strange variant of populist liberalism crossed with “business interest”.
Compare an average Republican with a German Christian Democrat or French Gaullist, let alone a British High Church Monarchist Tory.
IMO the problem of the British Conservative Party is that the traditionalist/realist/sceptic/pragmatic elements have in recent years been drowned out by the “transatlantic” new-right and the populist/nationalist Brexiteers, plus pensioner-pandering.
A period in opposition would do them a lot of good.
In terms of social-psychology, you need a representation for people and groups who prefer tradition to change.
This does not necessarily mean they can impose their will on society as a whole, but also that elements of continuity are contained within an open, evolving whole.
And that there is an approriate scepticism to projects of social “directed reconstruction” and the benignity of governments, officials, and politicians
Again, in many ways, many European societies are more “communitarian”, traditionalist and cohesion-oriented than the US, at the same time as being more mutualistic.
For instance in the UK, you can quite easily come across socialists who are also monarchist Christians.
Not a likely combination in America!
@dazedandconfused:
Like children pulling the wings off flies.
Can it survive without a head too?
@Kathy:
Actually, not so much.
IIRC the later Ringworld books (years since I read them) were about a “post-collapse” environment.
I’m thinking more an active, dynamic, super-technological congeries of cultures.
Sort of like elements of Banks’s Culture, Brin’s Five Galaxies, and similar others.
Or the online “Orions Arm project” universe.
But probably not so “active” as those SF models: millions of years old cultures aware that others similar exist, swapping knowledge on fairly amiable terms, and inclined to chastise (for Nicoll-Dyson Laser values of “chastise”) cultures that get obnoxiously agressive.
@Kathy: Topology is great when it comes to phase transitions in certain materials as well.
The main problem I found in doing research in this field was learning how to visualise in dimensions higher than 4….
@dazedandconfused:
@Kathy:
When it comes to quantum weirdness, I’m inclined to the view of a scientist I read many years back (forgotten who: Polkinghorne? Weinberg?) who said something along the lines of :
“At the macro scale, all the uncertainties smear out and sum to zero, statistically.
In atomic and sub-atomic terms, the wall next to you is empty space beset by quantum uncertainty as to the existence of its planck-scale components.
Much good that will do you if you try to walk through it.”
@grumpy realist:
You got one up on me. I never could visualize four.
Meanwhile, in this world a certain juvenile irritant continues to be obnoxiously aggressive:
Putin declares Russian annexation of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk.
And indulges in some nuclear willy-waving.
Responses:
Ukraine finally applies for accelerated admission to NATO.
US:
UK:
President Macron:
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen:
And on the field of battle, it looks like Ukraine may have encircled several thousand Russian troops in a pincer attack around Lyman
@Kathy:
The Enterprise still measures speed in relation to the speed of light, which is entirely different from folding space. “Moving across the universe by not moving at all.”
There is no reason to assume our solar system is particularly unusual.
@JohnSF:
I’m inclined to think that American politics all around is peculiar in world terms. I still find myself boggled by the fact that the Saenuri Party (that nominated Park Geun-he) seemed more liberal than Democrats here are on more than a few issues. What Americans get exercised about it truly strange.
@JohnSF: “The United States will always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. We will continue to support Ukraine’s efforts to regain control of its territory by strengthening its hand militarily and diplomatically.”*
*(Limited-time offer. Some restrictions may apply.) 🙁
@EddieInCA:
I’m loving too and not just because I have a HUUUUUUUGE crush on Diego Luna. I just want him to scowl at me and whisper “I’ve done terrible things for the Rebellion in my ear.”
What I like about Andor is how it has all of the Star Wars BS plus, like actual cool other stuff. I also hate how much I like the aesthetics of the space SS. Like they are soo evil, but soo cool. I also like how Rogue 1/Andor handle the barely contained aspirations of the space nazis (Krennic/Deedra)
@dazedandconfused:
Actually, there may be a few.
Plus for life that Sun is a relatively “quiet” star; not very unusually so, but IIRC it’s on the low end of the spread for the type.
Negative for life, but this may be way out of date now: recall modelling of stellar formation indicating Solar System may be a bit low in terms of optimum mass/orbit distribution.
That is, Venus is a bit too massive, Mars a bit to light. Average outcomes were for two, three or even four with mass/orbit combinations making for nitrogen/water vapour/carbon dioxide atmospheres.
And above all: Earth-Moon is unique in Solar System, and very rare in modelling, being close on a “dual planet”.
And that has a lot of potential implications re. geochemistry, plate tectonics, tidal effects on core hence magnetosphere, axial stability etc etc.
Possible (by no means certain) that Moon is key to Earth sustainable bio-hospitality.
If so, Earth could be quite a rare type.
Also, lots of systems detected recently seem to indicate closer-to-star Jovians or Super-Jovians, which could seriously bugger the mechanics of the old formation models.
William Proxmire is the guy I credit with canning the Boeing SST project and thus putting half the people in Seattle out of work in the late 60’s.
It may have been a good call. Concorde, which was similar, didn’t exactly have a raging success.
And yet, it was clear to me that his method was that of a bully pulpit, cherry picking scientific research with weird titles, and the scientists doing the work and funding it weren’t getting any chance at all to say why it was important.
These days, yes. It used to be different. It was Dwight Eisenhower who pushed for the US Interstate highway system. Nixon established the EPA. I don’t know. Maybe I am guilty of having a selective memory but I seem to recall a time when GOPers actually recognized that there were problems here and solutions were needed to fix them.
Christopher Miller on Putin’s speech:
It’s remarkable how much Putinist rhetoric overlaps with social-media MAGA/Qanon/neo-nationalist tropes.
And an interesting divergence: while it seems many US ultra-MAGA’s are aligning with Putin, the European “new right” is more divided.
Most BrexiCons, Brothers of Italy, and FN are pro-Ukraine.
AfD, Fidesz, and Farage more inclined to putinversteher
I have to note, “not necessarily a rightist party. A nice solid center right party would also do” is a wee bit of a contradiction. As far as I am concerned “A nice solid center right party” is just one that accepts reality. You know, climate change, women’s rights, racism, gender dysphoria… They might propose conservative solutions (that I no doubt would reject) but at least they would be acknowledging reality and that would be a starting point.
We don’t have that now. We have a party that says these things do not exist.
@Jay L Gischer:
Still a sore point in British and French aerospace circles.
It’s an open secret that Boeing lobbied like hell to prevent even subsonic Concorde flights wherever they could.
Though, to be fair, it was so high cost it needed guaranteed “seats full” routing; and short ranged.
So could, in the end, only operate the Paris and London to New York runs.
Still, IMUHO, one of the most wonderful aerospace creations of the 20th Century, in terms of pure technological force plus elegance engineering.
And one of the most beautiful aircraft ever.
One can’t say why basic science is important. One looks at what is known, what is not known, and wonders about what is in between. And then tries to find out. Why? because inquiring minds want to know. What does it apply to? Who the F knows??? But someday, it will be the answer to a question, dawg only knows what the question might be.
@JohnSF:
There are a lot of stars in the universe, which for all we know may not be the only one. If space is infinite and only .0000000001% of stars have a life bearing planet, there are an infinite number of life bearing planets.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Here’s one difference: UK Conservatives, as yet, remain committed to Net Zero.
Though it’s no secret some elements in the dominant ERG/Tufton St groups would like to dump it.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens at Conservative party Conference next week.
(Popcorn time!)
Women’s rights: probably still net onboard.
Racism: ambiguous but this is not exactly the same issue in the same ways as it is in the US.
Racism is a thing, to be sure, and some parts of the Right have tried to “culture war” it.
But legally sanctioned “Jim Crow” and the “States Rights of the South” are not the same thing anywhere in Europe that they are in the US, for obvious historical reasons.
For that reason, UK Cons not as attracted to the whiff as US ones are.
Gender dysphoria: ambiguous again. Truss has tried to use this as an issue.
But the primary public concern has NOT been with trans persons themselves, but with some unpleasant cases of het male sex criminals claiming to be trans women and then doing what you might expect.
But it is not a hot topic as in the US.
Why? Because, once again UK (and Europe generally) lack the insane evangelical/anti-abortion/white nationalist/sex-panic politics that the US seems to have.
Ask an average French or British conservative what they think re gender, answer is “meh”
And on race, go talk to Kwasi Kwarteng or Rishi Sunak.
Brit Cons care more about the colour of your shoes than the colour of your skin, by and large.
@dazedandconfused:
True enough.
But as said, I very seriously doubt that quantum effects will prove to have technical applications (as opposed to effects like in eg cathode tubes) at the macro scale.
I’d actually like to be wrong, but suspect the sceptical physicists are correct: at greater-than-molecular scale, the uncertainty effects get drowned in the noise.
If there is interstellar travel I suspect it will only be in three possible modes:
– generation “ships” (actually moving habitats);
– uploaded mind data transfer (see eg. some of Greg Egan’s SF for this);
– supermodified biologies/mechanisms and “fast” sublight modes (see eg Alastair Reynolds House of Suns; Charles Stross Neptunes Brood)
If so, extra-galactic travel is so time-consuming as to be irrelevant to cultural development.
And probably even longer range interstellar is marginal to any given cultural network.
@dazedandconfused:
@JohnSF:
Most stars are binary or in larger gravitationally bound groups. The Sun is a single star. Right there we seem to be unusual, but it may not be that simple.
the famous hot Jupiters are kind of an artefact of the methods used to find extrasolar planets. One relies on observing the wobble of a star. A massive planet closer to its star will produce a far more noticeable wobble, and do so more often. Another method, the one used by the Keppler probe, is to look for a periodic dimming of a star when a planet transits between it and us (yes, it’s dependent on line of sight and can miss lots of planets not properly aligned). Again, a larger world closer to its star produces a more noticeable dimming more often.
So these were the easier planets to fins, and naturally we found lots of them when we began looking. As tools improved, we found other types.
Binary stars seem not to have as many planets as single stars, but that may be because they are harder to discern by the methods we use. Although planets have been found around binary stars, including in the Centauri triple system closest to us.
But until we can make a census of solar systems at least in our corner of the galaxy, categorizing all planets, stars, etc., we can’t know how typical or atypical our Solar system is.
BTW, the Earth and Moon are a binary planet as far as I’m concerned.
Consider natural satellites. Mercury and Venus have none. Mars has two tiny ones, which are most likely captured asteroids. The gas giants have lots of moons (and rings of debris), some small, some very large, but all of them tiny compared to the planet.
The Moon, in contrast, is about 1/4 the size of Earth. IMO that makes us a double planet.
@Kathy:
Yes, the “detectability effect” versus the “bias in the models” effects.
Place your bets; and seconds out, round one at the conference.
As ever:
Need more data.
🙂
Big Moon is indeed Big Issue.
Also, orbital stability of binary system planets (and of close vs distant binaries, I suspect, but I’m getting way out of my depth at this point)
Did I mention recently I like Angela Rayner?
Labour Party Deputy Leader.
We should be grateful that people have such grace, such courage.
If others can live up to anything near what some Iranians or Ukrainians achieve, then this world will be blessed.
@Jay L Gischer:
Well, it wasn’t quite half, but I remember the billboards asking the last person leaving Seattle to please turn off the lights. Good times. Kept me from majoring in engineering, which I had no interest in anyway. But even before the SST scrapping, Boeing was already famous for hiring bunches of engineers and laying them off a few months later.
@OzarkHillbilly: True, but Republicans chose racism and yelling KKKLANG, KKKLANG, KKKLANG instead early on. You can’t do both and there was an easy to pick up constituency in Plan B.
@gVOR08:
And this is exactly why I have repeatedly said that I won’t debate with you: You ignore the meaning of what’s been said, pick a few phrases and twist them around so they say what you want, and then insist that something which hasn’t been said is wrong.
Nope.
I said “conservative”–and then, at the end, specified that the Republican party does not fit my definition.
I specifically stated that the current Republican party does not fit my definition of conservative.
You ignore my argument, insist I’m saying something I’m not, and prattle on about something that has nothing to do with my original statement.
ibid
Please cite where I made any mention of Republicans or Tories.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Would you really like me to make a list of how “liberal” governments are ignoring the 9th Amendment and restricting the rights of individuals “to protect us from ourselves”? It’ll be a very long list, and I’ll have to ask the moderators to let the flood of links be posted.
Umm… What?
Which I did.
The question was “why do we need a conservative party”. It was NOT “why do we need the current Republican party”.
You’re railing against a fictional stance that you made up. Absolutely every point you’re arguing against was made up by you out of thin air.