Comment Re:Nonstop action? Whattabore. (Score 1) 332
TL;DR
TL;DR
The neat thing about the freighter crews as they were depicted in the shows, was that the crews were often families that would live and reproduce on the ship, spending their entire lives in space on a fairly small and poorly-armed vessel. They would occasionally take on new blood from outside their family unit (this helps combat the immediate idea of gene pool degeneration), but the majority of the crew would be biological relatives.
These crews were much less idealistic than Starfleet personnel, and were very much loyal to their families above and beyond any set of ideals. No doubt they'd encounter all kinds of sticky situations in space with pirates, Klingons, and even Starfleet, and have to defend their family, defend their ship, make ends meet, and survive.
They were Moties !
Um, OK, but in the ORIGINAL Star Trek, the Captain, First Officer, Medical Officer and perhaps some hot looking Ensign would beam down to unspeakable horrors on some random planet in T-shirts and yoga pants.
How sensible was that?
Or not. The Chinese leadership isn't as all powerful as some make it out to be. They are skating a very fine line between their own interests and the goals and aspirations of an enormous population. Right now, they are keeping the population relatively comfortable and happy by reasonable economic growth. That llows them to continue their current attempts at World Domination. If that falters, then so does most of the goodwill and support the Chinese population gives to the government.
In that sense, it may be more representative that the situation in the US.
My Cell transcribes all voicemail to text
let's set so double the killer delete select all
But exactly why do all these systems start breaking down? I agree we're not getting particularly close to 120 year lifespans with our current approach, which is tinkering with treatments for the ailments of old age. But I suspect there actually is a simple magic bullet somewhere - something to stop us getting old.
I doubt it. Nature doesn't work that way. Getting to 120 is going to take a LOT of engineering. You are going to have to manipulate the immune system in a fundementally more complex way than we're doing know. You will need to have better organ transplantation and you're going to have understand the brain. You're going to have to understand human biology at a much deeper level that we currently do. And you will be swamped with details.
Aging isn't just one thing. It's the pileup of a lifetime of little things going wrong until the bridge collapses.
You may be able to DELAY aging with some sort of magic bullet but that is likely to have a whole raft of unintended consequences. Not to mention, you're going have to start on it when you're about 20 years old.
OK. I can see cannon or swords as weapons. That's the point of them. But why is bear repellent a weapon? Are bears secretly part of the anti-terrorist program?
A bottle of bear spray is 10 oz of 2% capsaicin. If that accidentally or purposely was released it could incapacitate an entire plane. Given that there is no reasonable use for said spray while flying, it makes abundant sense to pack it away so the chances of release are minimized. All it takes is one half crazed passenger to put a whole lot of people in serious jeopardy. And we all know that a typical flight carries more than one half crazed person.
Leaking gas for one thing. Same reason you shouldn't carry propane stoves, gas fueled lanterns or any number of potentially hazardous devices.
In Soviet Russia all pilots were armed, and rightly so.
Citation needed.
Well, they were often loaded. Not sure about the armed part.
For great justice.
I'd suggest getting your kids to learn:
1) Organic Chemistry (think Mad Men) - drugs will never go out of style.
2) Weed farming (ibid)
3) Mushroom cultivation (ibid)
4) Bulk chemical engineering (ibid)
5) Psychology and counseling techniques.
It's just a matter of being ahead of the curve.
Don't worry, they've thought about that. Most modern high performance weapons need maintenance and spare parts. Get on our shit list, no maintenance and no spare parts. It's either us or the Israelis (who somehow manage to manufacture high performance US weapon systems in their entirety).
Ask the Iranians. Their 'modern' Air Force has lots and lots of hanger queens. They've gone to making model RC planes since that is the best they can do on their own.
Kaboom. It's the earth shattering kaboom.
Bursting in flames is so 19th Century.
Really. This. How hard is it NOT to flame people on a COMPANY EMAIL system? Even if some hacker doesn't get to you, your boss or some HR flunky might. Leave the immature conversations to places like Slashdot. It's what we do
Every. Fucking. Hospital. Everywhere.
The only thing that keeps this from being a problem is that the gory details of most people's lives are really not interesting to anybody and they are hard to monetize. I would imagine that hospitals and clinics around Hollywood have been hit multiple times. If you are a 'high value target', ie, nobody here on Slashdot, I'd be worried.
Very worried.
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin
