To me this goes both ways. If there is a legitimate mission for the NSA to accomplish, then perhaps they should make sure at all times to act in a way that is deserving of the public's trust. The persistent confusion you mention is not the fault of the confused.
Even with a ship capable of overcoming the gravity wells present in the movie, it would likely still make sense to launch from Earth with boosters/staging to increase the amount of fuel/energy available to the ship for the rest of the journey.
Yes, that's a valid argument I think. On the other hand, I'd imagine if our technological level is such that we have SSTO ships (with SSTO even for more massive gravity wells than Earth's), we'd probably not use rockets but have another SSTO tanker fueling up the ship in orbit. You could maybe argue that ressource constraints in their dire situation have forged a situation where they put everything they had into those ships and the rockets were just what they had still lying around from an older age, so they made use of it. It certainly was another artistic choice in order to give it a more familiar feel and I can respect that.
A rocket-scientist (ok, aerospace engineer by training) friend was recently surprised that he hadn't realized this:
"If the radius of our planet were larger, there could be a point at which an Earth escaping rocket could not be built. Let us assume that building a rocket at 96% propellant (4% rocket), currently the limit for just the Shuttle External Tank, is the practical limit for launch vehicle engineering. Let us also choose hydrogen-oxygen, the most energetic chemical propellant known and currently capable of use in a human rated rocket engine. By plugging these numbers into the rocket equation, we can transform the calculated escape velocity into its equivalent planetary radius. That radius would be about 9680 kilometers (Earth is 6670 km). If our planet was 50% larger in diameter, we would not be able to venture into space, at least using rockets for transport."[1]
I concur, as strongly as I can, with this. This book gave me sight in a lot of areas I in which I was previously blind. Also, I couldn't put it down. I was high on insight the entire time I read it. I should point out, though, that while I did already program when I read this, I hadn't taken any CS courses, so YMMV. That being said, this book was enough to get me on the path to self-taught assembly and embedded programming.
I'm not saying I agree with it as an idea, but Google has a history of doing hard things (indeed, was founded on a hard thing), and what about the American 'can-do' attitude when it comes to hard things?
As for personal privacy, new-world Anglo countries (where I am, and where most of the people on this site are) don't hold a candle to the history of pogroms that old-world countries have had, with the exception of treatment of first peoples. It's not just the Nazis and the Holocaust here, but a long history of terrorism and vigilantism. Europe still has wars (and similar) based on ethnicity - for example the Balkan states in the 90s, or eastern Ukraine going on right now. The last significant internal conflict in the new-world Anglosphere was 150 years ago. Europe has had a significantly different experience, which should be taken into context when understanding their decisions around privacy.
> Seriously though in regards to some of the other names you mentioned is there really any difference by voting for whoever is running against them? Many people (myself included) though Obama was different - that obviously turned out to be completely wrong...so how are we supposed to know who won't do these things?
To me, this idea should encourage more people to vote outside the major parties. If you voted democrat to avoid the consequences of a republican victory, only to find that the results were largely the same anyway, it's no longer a "wasted" vote to vote third party.
>"Right" and "wrong" have no place in international politics. Nations exist, among themselves, in the state of nature, and in nature there is only power: the ability to do. It is irrelevant whether it is "right" for a nation to impose itself as hegemon. It is inevitable that some national will. The only topic of discussion is: would you like some other hegemon better than the one we have?
The realist in me appreciates this point, but the parts of me which are more hopeful think that this idea is the last justification available to people who are unwilling to investigate alternatives. Even if you accept that in nature there is only power: the ability to do, there are many ways to exercise that power. What if that power came from a legitimate belief that the people in the world who aren't US citizens are equally as important? American hegemony does prevent potential worse situations, but that's not its purpose. It's to protect Americans and money.
For the establishment, when it comes to secular vs. theocratic regimes, the the key factor is not whether the regime is secular/theocratic or really any other type. The key factor is how is this or that regime going to help get cheap energy into the US's hands. They can talk a good game about promoting secular democratic governments in the world, and they have to talk that game, because it's the only quasilegitimate game they can talk, but it's often a lot easier to buy oil from a dictator. If the dictator doesn't want to play ball, they can campaign for regime change, in the name of democracy.
You should maybe consider tracking which images are more likely to lead to a correct curtain selection. Then run an additional survey where subjects rank the same set of photos for hottness/arousal level, and see if there is a correlation.
