you just listed more than 7 hours. And you're upset with my 8 hours?

Sorry pal, but it's illegal to pitch a tent at the gate. Besides, my television won't be very watchable with all of those big terminal windows, and I like my privacy too much given all the people.

So, for us normal humans with a 3'000 square-foot house about 30 minutes away from the terminal:

we pack into small luggage
we call the taxi
we wait for the taxi
we ride the taxi
we get to the airport early, so as to not get there late
we wait in line
we check in
we check our luggage
we walk through about three miles of airport hallway
we wait in line
we go through security
we wait in line
we walk onto the plane
we wait, for nothing
we taxi out to the runway
we wait for the previous plane
we de-ice in the winter
we take-off
we land
we taxi
we wait for an open gate
we wait in line
we disembark
we walk through three miles of hallway again
we wait for luggage
we walk to the door
we wait for a taxi
we ride the taxi
we arrive at our destination

oh yeah, we also bought the ticket and waited for our flight-time.

So, right now, as you read this, don't pretend, stand up, and go 3'000 miles in any direction. Find out how long it takes. I'm sure there isn't a plane going where you want exactly when you want it, but even if there is, all of the above takes time.

EIGHT HOURS. Do it, and wear a watch when you do.

I live in Canada. My government's actually really quite fantastic. But yeah, we do pay taxes don't we. But we also have no actual problems.

Although, while we're on the topic, most of the wonderful fun-driving roads in the U.S. were built as a make-work project back when there were no jobs and the government just paid people to build roads from nowhere to nowhere. That sounds pretty socialist to me.

In any event, there are school shootings and riots in the streets on a monthly basis. That's just embarassing.

we have not had people travel through space -- i.e. to the moon or to orbit. No human has gotten up and gone.

What we've had is about thirty thousand humans get up, to send five humans. Much like your arm is attached to your body, those astronauts are attached to the space program, and hence to the ground.

Your hand can move around seemingly freely around your body, but only within the range of your arm. Sending your hand even thirty feet from your body is a much more difficult task.

That's what I'm saying the trip to mars really is. Orbit and moon don't have significant communication delay. So you can ask for help and you can get it. Advice, opinion, analysis. "Houston, we have a problem." . . . and then dead silence for a length of time long-enough that the problem has changed.

How many tries did it take to get to antarctica -- which I think is a really great example. So is everest. Congrats, after many attempts, someone got there. Who's gone back to build a house? Do you want to go build one?

stand up right now, and be 3'000 miles away within 8 hours. You can't do it. You don't live in the airport. The plane doesn't leave right now. There's a line. There're about three miles of airport hallway. The taxi isn't at your door yet. You haven't packed. You haven't gone through security. You don't have your ticket. The plane is sold out. You live thirty minutes away from the airport. The airplane doesn't take off from the gate. It's also not the next plane to take the runway.

Stop making shit up that you read in a newspaper. Get up, and make the journey yourself. Not for pretend. Do it in actuality. It takes eight hours -- in the summer.

I'd forgotten about the infinite nuclear energy. That's going to be my new example. Especially because we very much could have infinite nuclear energy, except for about six dozen cultural issues, legal issues, and our all-time-favourite deterant of civilization advancement: perceived property values.

wyoming has radiation? communication delays? nothing to see, or to do? No medical equipment?

You're pretty sure about gravity not messing with you? It takes three days to die of thirst. It takes a week to die of thirst given one extra bottle of water from the transport ship. I don't know what that gravity would do to your digestive systems.

But isn't that the point? "Pretty sure" just ain't sure enough.

Oh yeah, and the effects of the gravity can guarantee your death immediately, even if you won't actually die for another two months.

Why don't you try it, then tell me how long it takes. Remember, cradle to grave. Door to door. Not take-off to landing. Not plane door. Not airport door. House door to house door. Did you drive to the airport? Did you walk through three miles of airport hallways? Security line? Wait to taxi? Did you get there early so you wouldn't be late? Did you spend extra time packing into smaller luggage?

Right now, this instant, as you read this, if you were to stand up from whereever you are sitting and want to be 3'000 miles away, how long would it take?

Do you get to wait for the taxi? The bus? Your luggage?

It's eight hours from a residential suburb house in new york to a residential suburb house in california. And you want to go to mars tomorrow.

yeah, that's probably a good 100 years away, if not 500. Aside from dangers like radiation, nutrition, and other oh-so-subtle big things like gravity -- each of which is likely to kill a human long before they need their first water source -- there are also dangers in the trip itself, like radiation, nutrition, gravity, the vessel, going stir-crazy, and the time itself. Before all of that, there's the money, the interest, and the law. There's the communication delay, the medical equipment that doesn't exist, and the general goodbye-ness of it all. Oh, and then there's the actual "success" part -- ten failures does not a landing make. And finally, and I can't stress this enough we aren't going to mars the day after settling on the moon; and we sure as hell aren't going to mars before settling the moon.

So, figure another twenty years before ten humans live on the moon (the way they do on the space station now). Figure another twenty years before the moon is routinely stable, reliable, and worthwhile. Then figure fifty more years to actually give a damn about mars.

"eventually" appears as the heading on my to-do lists too. There's "now", "today", "tomorrow", "this week", "next week", "this month", "next month", "soon", "later", and "eventually". I think it 25 years I've yet to even start even one task from the "eventually" section.

Technology moves very quickly these days. Humans still don't. How about building a transit system that lets me get from new york to california in under EIGHT HOURS! then you can work on mars.

umm, all I need to do is lure a victim to my untrusted dumpster, and I can do all sorts of bad things to them.

The problem isn't that there's a way for me to hurt you. The problem is that you're walking down dark alleys alone at night.

Stop doing that.

Why are you going to untrusted web-sites in the first place?

Nah, that's not the one. That's pretty concise.

Imagine just the lyrics, each one linked far far away. So one term might be to a wikipedia article, another to some russian site, a third to a research centre in bolivia, a fourth to a county web-site in the middle of nowhere, a fifth to a boxing club, etc..

I can read your page in 20 minutes. But that site in 1995 took days to read -- because each word was another site with new interests.

But this was in 1995, back when "surfing" the web was actually possible -- when sites linked to other sites. That's kind of the point of this thread, sites don't do that anymore. So there's no getting lost surfing the web anymore. I do miss that.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did -- it's probably still in my Compuserve account -- do you remember when e-mail addresses had a comma?

And besides, who'd have thought that the best web-site ever was from 1995? I sure didn't know that at the time.

It's been at least 20 years since I saw the best web page ever. Very simple: the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", with each term linked to yet another external site discussing its history.

So, a typical commute here is about 10km. 99% would be 9'900 metres, leaving 100 metres as the 1%.

Now, I agree that only driving the last 100m would be convenient for many. But that's not the 99% here.

In this case, it's as bad as driving 1m every 100m. It's actually much worse. It's MAYBE driving 1m every 100m.

So, either I'm staring at the road, effectively "driving" without touching anything, so that when the car suddenly beeps, I suddenly grab the wheel, or I'm reading my book and writing an e-mail, and then instantaneously stopping, looking up, grabbing the wheel, and figuring out what the hell is going on -- assuming I heard the car's beep.

This isn't robo-car. This is car-as-train -- with paint and cameras acting as train tracks and train wheels.

It's never been about the perfect highways. You won't find a 10km stretch of highway here without construction, detours, stopped cars, emergencies, and roadkill at any time of the year. Add snow, ice, rain, black ice, debris, fog, sand, salt, and sun, and I spend over a quarter of my driving without being able to see the lane markings at all.

inductive, meet deductive.