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Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Russian billionaire Yuri Milner says if the space rock 'Oumuamua is giving off radio signals, his team will be able to detect them—and they may get the results within days. We can ask them where are they going (and can we come too?)
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They'll probably fly right by...oh wait they may want to stop at walmart and pick something up for he trip?
Someone's therapist knows all about you!
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The Oumuamuans do everything in threes... 
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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The Daily Mail spoke with the leader of a team of researchers with the National Institute on Aging in the U.S. and reports that they have found that putting mice on a diet consisting of eating nothing every other day for a period of time day resulted in improved cognitive functioning. I fast - sometimes for minutes a day
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Sure. But fasting as compared to eating what?
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In a statement peppered with boldface warnings, the Securities and Exchange Commission is urging people eyeing crypto-asset investments to exercise “extreme caution.” There might be scams involved in bitcoin?
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"China’s big brother: how artificial intelligence is catching criminals ... " [^]Quote: In one of the company’s open spaces is a large screen that identifies anyone who stares at it, and then plays videos of their recent movements throughout the premises. The effect is perhaps a little “Big Brother”, but this is nothing compared to what else Yitu can do – and is doing.
Quote: Whole cities in which the algorithms are working say they have seen a decrease in crime. According to Yitu, which says it gets its figures directly from the local authorities, since the system has been implemented, pickpocketing on Xiamen’s city buses has fallen by 30 per cent; 500 criminal cases have been resolved by AI in Suzhou since June 2015; and police arrested nine suspects identified by algorithms during the 2016 G20 summit in Hangzhou. Dragonfly Eye has even identified the skull of a victim five years after his murder, in Zhejiang province.
«While I complain of being able to see only a shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is now, since I'm not at a stage of development where I'm capable of seeing it.» Claude Levi-Strauss (Tristes Tropiques, 1955)
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Quote: Whatever the future holds, Yitu’s chief executive is sure of one thing: “The world is going to change so fast that our imagination can’t even foresee, now, what it will look like in 30 years.”
The one thing we can predict about the future is that whatever we predict about it now will be woefully off the mark of what actually comes to pass. Yet, ironically, in retrospect it will all seem to have been so obvious....
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That's not entirely true. For years, science fiction writers have "over predicted" the rise of technology. In nearly all aspects, we are not nearly as advanced as most of them have predicted. Of course, in some ways we are farther but not very many.
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Yes... though not quite sure in what way that makes what I said "not entirely true" ..?
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I don't know anything I can say is 'not entirely true' with a straight face.
«While I complain of being able to see only a shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is now, since I'm not at a stage of development where I'm capable of seeing it.» Claude Levi-Strauss (Tristes Tropiques, 1955)
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And, George Orwell appears more prescient every year.
«While I complain of being able to see only a shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is now, since I'm not at a stage of development where I'm capable of seeing it.» Claude Levi-Strauss (Tristes Tropiques, 1955)
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“This is a giant step,” the president said during a ceremony. "We could walk forever, walking on the moon"
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Because the moon is the perfect place from where to start if you want to go anywhere within the solar system. If we don't want to stay at home forever, we need a moon base.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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I want to go to Malibu. That is in the solar system yes?
... such stuff as dreams are made on
modified 12-Dec-17 4:59am.
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That's staying at home.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Ron Anders wrote: Why.
Please tell me you're kidding. The ROI from our space program is enormous. We never should have even slowed down...
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The ROI from the space program is actually pretty poor, the manned program is even worse. The biggest bang for the buck actually came from the weapons programs.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: The ROI from the space program is actually pretty poor
Strange, because that's totally opposite of the conclusions reached by every study on the topic that I've ever read in my whole life.
Joe Woodbury wrote: The biggest bang for the buck actually came from the weapons programs.
If you ignore aerodynamics, GPS, telecommunications, etc...
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You were right to call me out since the headline was on my mind and my response was more narrowly focused than it should have been. To clarify, the space program can be divided into four areas, where the last two are very intertwined:
Manned
Unmanned exploration
Communications
Military
It is the last two where there has been a large monetary ROI, though again they are intertwined. For example, the GPS system was a military project. Also note that the Mercury and Gemini programs used modified ICBMs for their rockets.
In terms of knowledge, the unmanned exploratory programs, including weather satellites, have have a large intellectual ROI.
The manned program, however, has largely been a bust, monetarily and very iffy intellectually. Many of the things even NASA attributes to it should really be attributed to military research or non-space research (aerodynamics.) The ballistic and guided/smart missile programs alone were responsible for quite a bit of today's tech. (One reason the manned program hasn't contributed much is that safety requires that "tried and true" technology be used, not cutting edge technology. Another problem is that what can be learned by adding people is mainly whether people can survive in space and that was largely settled by 1974--the answer being yes, on the short term, not very well on the medium term and no on the long term.)
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I still disagree with you concerning manned spaceflight. Here are a couple links that may sway you:
The ROI Of Space Exploration[^]
NASA ROI - every dollar invested returns $14 to the economy.[^]
But even if we conclude that manned spaceflight does not give us any immediate return on our investment, I contend that it is still worth it in the very long run. Mankind will need to travel and live beyond the bounds of Earth sometime in our future. Maybe not for hundreds of years but it will happen. We'll be better off then if we make the effort now.
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