Comment Re:Too bad (Score 3, Interesting) 44
Astronomy isn't exactly about pretty pictures, you know! But even then, you can make pretty pictures out of data from other bands of the EM spectrum, like the AC mentioned earlier.
It is illegal for US companies to pay bribes abroad.
I wasn't aware that it was O.K. for US companies to be involved in bribery locally.
That observation never quite sat with me though. It works for an ant - incapable of reason, but swap out the situation for a PERSON sitting on another circular surface (like, say, a planet), and we have figured out quite readily that our surface is unending but finite - it's obvious - go in another direction and you end up circling back.
The analogy has nothing to do with the intelligence of the creatures. I agree that ants on a balloon are no different than humans on Earth, so the appropriate analogy will involve imaginary two-dimensional creatures on the two-dimensional surface of the balloon (similar to three-dimensional humans roaming about in a universe with three spatial dimensions). You should consider the surface as it is and not as being embedded in a higher-dimension space, i.e. you should neither consider the volume occupied by the balloon nor the space surrounding it.
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.
