Bonam

I would say that in the coming years it will be considered odd to meet potential romantic partners in any other way.

Easily said but the reality is most people don't really react positively to someone "interacting" with them out of the blue. Start talking to someone in their 20s-30s in a random setting and they will assume that you are either: 1) crazy, 2) creepy, 3) about to ask for money. Tinder and similar tools provide a platform where the purpose of the interaction is known and people can interact on their own time when they feel like doing so. Culture has changed too much relative to what you may have experienced. You can't just "go out there" and start "interacting" because that is so far outside the norm that it will not generally get positive reactions. When it comes to asking women out, if you approach one at random, you're just as likely to end up in court for harassment as you are to go on a date (both outcomes at the <1% level). To interact productively, you have to use the medium that people expect you to use.

DoP is not "my boy". The point of my post wasn't to insult your "imagination" but to get you to think harder about what kind of evidence you are really looking for. Is your belief truly open to change, or is the evidence you would need so difficult as to essentially be unobtainable? What evidence would a deeply religious person need to convince them that god doesn't exist? Does such evidence exist or is it essentially impossible to have such evidence? Yes, they generally are. Nonetheless, as far as I've seen, you've generally been quite unconvinced by his arguments, requesting better evidence that you have yet to define. Thank you for your recommendation about who I should talk to. I'll give your suggestion the full consideration that it deserves. You, however, try to come off as if you are rooted as deeply as you can be in objectivity and evidenced-based beliefs, though you admit you have some biases. That's a good philosophy, and I am trying to explore how much you've actually thought about it or is it merely your talking point? Are you truly more open to contrary evidence than the typical partisan hack, or do you just think you are?

Sounds wishy washy. I don't think you've ever agreed on what is a set of "Canadian values" to begin with so I suspect that if you saw such evidence, rather than having it change your mind you would simply question the definition of what Canadian values meant in whatever survey or study had been conducted. If you asked me what evidence would change my mind on certain topics I would have better answers. I would suggest that if you really consider yourself open to changing your point of view on this or other subjects, ask yourself honestly what kind of evidence it would take until you come up with something more specific. And then, look for such evidence, or post here and see if anyone has already come across such evidence.

Ok but that still doesn't answer what kind of evidence you are looking for. Could you provide a specific example of a piece of evidence that would, as you say, "change your mind" on this topic?

I went out to Idaho to watch the total eclipse. Perfect weather. Amazing sight! Here's some cool photos. The first two are at Smith Rock, Oregon. I didn't take them but I have climbed those routes so that was pretty cool to see. Last one, is identical to one my friend took while we were watching it.

For example? Because statistics about who commits terrorist attacks in Western countries doesn't seem to be the evidence you are looking for. Statistics about the prevalence of extreme views doesn't seem to be the evidence you are looking for. So what kind of evidence are you looking for?

What evidence?

And we saw how that turned out for Ukraine. How much was their guarantee of territorial integrity worth when push came to shove? Not much. If Ukraine had its Soviet era nuclear arsenal, it is unlikely Putin would ever have sought conflict there. Would the US have been so eager to intervene in Iraq if it had functional nuclear weapons? Would NATO have gone into Libya if it had nuclear weapons? Nope. Nothing is guaranteed, but there is no arguing that nukes are a huge deterrent. That will perhaps become less so as the US and other nations develop credible missile defense systems that could be trusted to intercept ICBMs or other nuclear warhead delivery methods with a high degree of certainty. But until then, any nation that finds itself at odds with the international community can hold no better trump card than a nuclear weapons capability.

I think from the perspective of North Korean leadership, they are acting logically. There are pretty much two threats to any regime remaining in power: internal and external. The internal threat is addressed by massive surveillance, censorship, purges, indoctrination, and terror. The external threat is addressed through deterrence, and there is no better deterrence than nuclear weapons. Any country in possession of nuclear weapons or close to being in possession of nuclear weapons would have to be completely insane to give up that guarantee of their safety from foreign interference in exchange for a piece of paper. We all know what promises and treaties are worth: less than the paper they are written on.

Google is located in the squarely in the middle of the ultra "liberal" social justice bubble. When you work at a place like that, you either realize the culture you are working in and curb your speech accordingly, or you get fired. Many distinguished professors at universities have also lost their jobs for daring to discuss similar issues. Unfortunately the reality is that US society (and to some extent all Western society) has polarized into a totally insane social justice cult, and a totally insane religious nutjob authoritarian cult, and wherever you live is likely to be solidly inside one bubble or the other. If you happen to be a normal person with moderate positions, you just have to keep your mouth shut and hope it all blows over. Because if you happen to speak out and say something nuanced, you'll be thrown to the wolves. Similar to how people had to keep their head down during the communist or fascist repression... the consequences for now are lower (losing a job or public shaming rather than prison camps or death), but the mindset is the same.

That was a fun battle to watch. I like how the soldiers were just turned to man-shaped piles of ash instantly by the dragonfire, and then blew away in the wind. Of course, we're once again left to wonder how a bunch of horsemen crossed the sea from Dragonstone, got around King's Landing and out to the reach, especially since all of Dany's fleets are destroyed I think. Maybe she ferried all those Dothraki across on her dragons in her free time? And where were the other 2 dragons? I'm surprised she didn't invite Jon Snow to come along and be a 2nd dragon rider so they could bbq Lanisters together. Who wants to bet those two end up getting married? Are people above really still talking about Gendry? No one cares about Gendry lol. Bran knows a lot of stuff but he seems stunned and unable to use his knowledge for any purpose in the real world. Will be interesting to see if he snaps out of it and is able to use his powers to help direct the war against the Night King...

Not really possible with foreseeable technology unless you were willing to have the flights take about twice as long. Might have to wait til you can miniaturize a fusion reactor enough to put it on an airliner.... no sooner than 80 years out at best given how fusion is going.

Who cares about knowledge and truth compared to the far more immediate concern that someone's feelings might get hurt?

Nope... no one else has ever read it. What's it about?

Nah. It's got a 1 degree orbital inclination. That keeps it plenty far away from a space elevator most of the time. And, unlike the millions of pieces of space debris in Earth orbit, Phobos is easy to track. When it crosses the path of the space elevator, you just send a mechanical wave through the tether from the base station which deflects the tether away from the location of Phobos' passage. As for Deimos, it sounds like a pretty good space station at the end of the space elevator tether to me. You just have to speed up its orbit from 30.3 hours to 24.6 hours so that its Areosynchronous. That or put the space elevator base station on a rail track that follows the Martian equator and moves to keep in synch with Deimos.

1. Space Planes Bad idea. When it comes to getting things into orbit, you pay for every kg, there's no way around it. A plane has a whole lot of mass that is not necessary to be in space - wings, landing gear, the shape of the body, etc. All that weight is useless in space. Reusability is good, but space planes are not the way. Now that the technology exists for rocket stages to land back down vertically, that's a much better solution. 2. Space Elevator I actually did some work on this back in the day. Technologically, the tether material is only one of the issues to be solved. Carbon nanotubes potentially have the needed strength, though making a long carbon nanotube tether with bulk properties that are anywhere close to the small-scale properties of a nanotube remains a problem. Besides this though, the entire space elevator tether needs to be able to dodge or withstand space debris. Even a few mm size piece of space garbage could slice the tether in half if it hits it. Accurate tracking of all the millions of pieces of space debris down to that size is nearly impossible. Alternately, you could try to clean up all the space garbage before putting up the space elevator - but that too would be a giant effort. Some research has been done on that but it's not easy - plasma clouds, laser beams, giant magnets, etc, have all been considered but none of these are ready for prime time. Making the tether mechanically robust enough to withstand impacts isn't an option since then the whole thing would be monstrously heavy and cost trillions of dollars. You could try to shield the structure with a plasma cloud, but again, lots of R&D work to do there. Besides these technical challenges, there are also geopolitical challenges. A structure going from the Earth's surface into space would fall under all kinds of international treaties. The public would have all kinds of safety concerns, both rational and irrational. A lot of people would be opposed on a religious basis. And of course the thing would be the juiciest terrorist target on the planet. Personally, I think we should build a space elevator on Mars before we build one on Earth. Here's why: 1) Mars has the same rotation period as Earth but much lower gravity. That means you don't need as strong a material to build the space elevator. Existing tether materials are strong enough for a Martian space elevator. 2) There's almost no space debris to worry about - we haven't polluted Mars orbit nearly as much as we've polluted Earth orbit. 3) The hardest part about Mars missions is actually landing on Mars. Unlike Earth with its thick atmosphere where you can use the aircraft body and then parachutes to bleed all your speed on re-entry even for very massive spacecraft, the Martian atmosphere is too thin. Aerobraking can only bleed part of your speed when going to Mars and parachutes are impractically large to slow down a heavy payload. Hence NASA's airbag landings, rocket-powered sky-cranes, and of course the failure by all other countries to ever successfully land anything there. A space elevator would make it much easier for cargo to get down to the Martian surface. It could also be used as a slingshot to send stuff on a return-to-Earth trajectory essentially for free. 4) Building it on Mars avoids all of the political issues and keeps it far away from the reach of saboteurs and terrorists. 5) Demonstrating a working space elevator system on Mars will increase the incentive to build one on Earth - once the practical benefits are realized and a functional system is demonstrated, it will be a lot easier for companies or governments to consider undertaking the much costlier and more complex problem of an Earth space elevator.

Yes, me too. I'm excited to see what new discoveries will be made with the JWST. Just hope the Ariane 5 carrying it doesn't blow up on launch!

Certainly I agree government has a role, and regulation is certainly part of it. Funding and research is also part of it. Robotic probes and telescopes. Human explorers, too. I just think NASA has shown it can't build rockets for a reasonable price any more and should get out of the rocket building business and focus on what it does better. No one does robotic probes better than NASA. No one does space telescopes better than NASA. NASA should focus on the science and exploration objectives and buy launches from private companies.

The US spending 0.1% of GDP on its space program can hardly be called vigorous (though it is still a larger fraction than other nations). Besides the low spending, NASA has a major problem with direction when it comes to manned space travel / big rockets, which also makes it the opposite of vigorous. It spent billions of dollars on the Constellation program and the Ares launch vehicles, only to end up scrapping all of it, and there's every chance SLS will go the same way. There's still no replacement for the Space Shuttle to get astronauts into orbit, ~10 years later. The Space Shuttle itself was a fiasco, absurdly expensive per launch (~$1.5 billion per launch). As for big business doing it out of altruism... not really. What's really driving things is that Musk and Bezos are giant space enthousiasts and happen to have billions of dollars. If I was a billionaire, I'd do the same thing. No monetary return needed, I'd just want to make big rockets and send them places.

No, but plenty of money to be made selling NASA a ride for its probe to Neptune. The private company can build the rocket for 1/10 the cost of NASA, but charge NASA 1/5 what NASA would cost to build it. Boom NASA saves 80% and the private company makes 100% profit margin. Blue Origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn 45,000 kg to LEO announced so far. And unlike Spacex, Blue Origin is very secretive. I suspect they have much bigger things in the works quietly. SLS is 70,000 kg to LEO in Block 1, which is comparable to the falcon heavy. SLS Block 2 with the 130,000 kg capacity you mention is 12+ years away, and I'd give 5:1 odds it never flies. I'm betting ITS has a better chance of actually getting built than SLS Block 2, and ITS will have 550,000 kg payload to LEO, which is 4x more than SLS Block 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITS_launch_vehicle

Sure, having 2 or 3 separate programs is fine for redundancy. Problem is SLS costs 10-100x more than it should compared to what Spacex and Blue Origin are doing. If the objective is not putting all the eggs in one basket, NASA should have paid 1-2 more other private companies to do similar work. NASA can't build a large rocket for a reasonable price, and that's been completely obvious for about 40 years now.

By 2057? Here's my predictions: we'll have landed a person on Mars some country or other will have landed people on the Moon again and probably established a small station (not a colony, more a lab like the ISS but on the moon) space tourism to low earth orbit will be routine (but still very expensive - only for the very rich) we'll have solved the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy we'll have explored Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and other targets of interest more thoroughly with robotic probes, and very likely found microscopic lifeforms existing somewhere else in the solar system besides Earth we'll have detected multiple planets within 20 light years that are potentially habitable and spectroscopically analyzed their atmospheres with a new generation of telescopes we'll have made a functional fusion rocket but will not have yet used it for any mission As for the question of should we colonize the Moon, Mars, and eventually other things? Yes, of course. There's really only two choices: become a spacefaring species or sit at home and wait to die.

All the folks whining about the rich and powerful will still be sitting on Earth whining about the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, those who have something useful to contribute will become a spacefaring species.

Meh, SLS is a redundant and wasteful program. It'll cost 10-100x more to do the same thing that Spacex will do with the Falcon Heavy. The only positive thing to be said about the SLS program is that it keeps the guys at NASA and its contractors working so they don't forget how to do rocket stuff and its good training for the new people coming in.