Starship Asterisk*

let me balance it a bit:

What you may find “pretty” many others may find appalling, due to the danger it represents, and due to the pain and suffering the use and even the testing of such weapons have caused. All of those people enjoying cars and planes and whatever else crashing and blowing up in hollywood movies are prob...

geckzilla wrote:not the explosions or pretty pictures

ahem... what?? this is apod forum. it was always about pretty pictures. and explosions.

Hey Chris, how'd you sneak that key-board smilie past the computer :?: Every time i type : and add )... it gives me this :) He has "Disable smilies" checked in the Options box below the full editor. Watch me blowing your mind: :) : ) :P : P (hey, 2013! as much as I like geckzilla's idea, ...

neufer wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Distances of the nearest stars from 20,000 years ago until 80,000 years in the future. Proxima Centauri is in yellow[/color][/b]

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Look, those stars are getting really close soon. What is it, if not the invitation? We must get ready!

on my way to 2013

updated calculator says that we could get to P.C. in 10 years at only 0.39c (did I say "only" ) corresponding Earth time would be 4.2/0.39 = 10.77 years, quite manageable time spans for both the crew and their relatives.

Yep, I made this calculator once to show how pathetic our space technology is. Btw, that calculator has Prox. Centauri at only 15000 au... 15,000 ± 700 AU according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri waaaait, that's not the distance to Sun. Need to update my calculator!!!

(of course, the light itself gets there instantly... but NH would have to wait 1 hour and 20 minutes to see reflected light from pluto)

orin stepanek wrote:Only 5 AU for encounter with Pluto! Did I say only?

yes, it's like 40 minutes for the light to go.

estimated time of arrival does not seem to be good match

wonderboy wrote:However, in your example, you are the colloidal silver that gets the job done!!!

How do you the silver is me, and not, for example, my chair, or my keyboard?

Beyond drinks it and his colds go away, we know this because it happens. But what makes you think there is a connection, and these are not two separate facts? For example. At my job I am fixing bugs in computer software. I am also sitting and typing on my keyboard. If I do not sit, or do sit but do...

Beyond wrote:I've never had a failure in eliminating a cold with it

Hey, why not clone this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_and_the_common_cold but make it about silver this time?

I'm not attacking anything. Do you feel attacked? Maybe that's just your ignorance slipping away. oh, please. now you are trying to insult me instead of attacking the target I suggested. which you simply can't attack. fine with me, I rest my case then. but, since you were more interested in MJ case...

@wonderboy, I did acknowledge these exceptions way above, when I said Unless you are one of these guys . And again, with probabilistic interpretation, exceptions do not matter. @geckzilla, of course I did bring MJ up for the sake of making a joke, not as a serious argument. why don't you please atta...

makc, I have plenty of control over my life ; hold on, I did not include you into that group specifically, did I? no need to be defensive. in fact, this whole argument of whether we have control over things... how do I put it, I am not pushing it to certain outcome. it's just that seing one side of...

Ha ha, now this post is so much different from what you said before and gives me new reasons to consider as to why they had no control over named things... NOT :) Then again, it does push my train of thought... towards the people who always complain about their life and claim they have no control ov...

Here's nice quote on subject: Demographer Kenneth Wachtel estimates that the typical English child born in 1947 would have had around 60,000 theoretical ancestors at the time of the discovery of America. Of this number, 95 percent would have been different individuals and 5 percent duplicates. (Soun...

...and from here I ended up on wikipedia. and 4 posts away from 2k.

Nitpicker wrote: an average generation length of 30 years, one need go back no further than 1000 years, before one's ancestors alive at that time, outnumber the current population of the Earth.

Which is clearly impossible, right? Your calculations do not account for inbreeding.

They had NO control over my height... snip Misconception, I say. Do you really expect a giant to be born to family of midgets? If the correlation between their height and yours is not enough for you to call it "some degree of control", there is always an option to abort the fetus if some ...

I like being tall, but I had no input into becoming tall. Ditto eye color and other genetic traits. Pride is for accomplishments, things done or achieved. In this interpretation, at least your parents can be proud of these things, because they did have certain degree of control over it. In other ne...

this ain't a joke, you know. serious business. ladies are proud with their big boobs. men are proud with their ..other parts. or, for another example, eye color. why not skin color, too?