I hope they're not trying to hit a resonance. I figured that, given the length of suspension as a pendulum, mine have a natural frequency somewhat below 1 Hz.

Has anyone read Neal Stephenson's novel "Interface"? We're getting oh so close to it.

Buddy, I don't know how many times we need to say this...
things are made from petroleum simply because it's the most abundant thing in our lives.
We can make stuff out of CORN if we want, geez... or insert other abundant resource.

[...]

You are being coy here. A projection as you describe it here is a conditional prediction. If accuracy of the model (that is, how close numerical values of the model match reality) no longer matters, then neither does the "projection" of the model. I have a dim view of errors in predictions that are rationalized after the fact (such as happens here). I think it merely an exercise in sophistry to explain why any climate model of the past few centuries (including a few that predict the end of the world from the Bible or astrological phenomena, for example) doesn't fit future observation.

Going to Mr. Schmidt's comment, he avoids noting that this model was used to attempt to influence government policy. If this is the best you can expect (which is what he claims in that quote you give), then climate models would be inadequate justification for carbon controls and other related policy issues. To be blunt, I think instead we have yet another indication that climatology needs discipline and rigor. The issues are too big and the stakes too high to go with the usual academic sloppiness. You can't say, "Oh he's just off by ten percent in twenty years, that's pretty good actually." Especially when that error puts you between the lowest of the "we need to do something scenarios" and the "We don't need to do anything" scenario. In other words, the error is of the sort that heightens unreliability of the model.

And I think it is crazy to attempt policy decisions using "projections" that can have factor of three differences between the low and high estimates. IMHO,a lot of people can die from bad policy put forward on inadequate climate research. It's not good enough in my view to be cautious when someone turns up a potential problem. Those kinds of errors means a lot of problems can't be excluded from estimates.

Finally, I simply can't take this seriously when the most powerful institutions steering the science are controlled by people with blatant bias. The only reason I can see for James Hansen to be head of the GISS is his bias. I don't buy that he can't be replaced by a real, professional scientist/administrator who is of similar scientific quality to Hansen. They're out there and bet there are more than a few at the GISS. You only need that sort of bias in charge, if your intent is some sort of deception.

It's only 3,000 feet. The salt won't stay up there that long.

I agree. I was being half flippant. Advertising something as a "center of excellence" is propaganda. Titles don't define excellence.

When you're quoting someone, does it hurt to acknowledge? Those who haven't read that book will think you came up with that on your own, and you don't want to be unduly credited, do you?

May I introduce you to http://freedesktop.org/? Their specifications mean that these "disparate groups" don't actually have to work together to interoperate.

We've actually got a fair number of inventions stockpiled that would, by themselves, change space travel a lot. What we don't have is a good economic or military reason to go there in the first place, but that will probably be changing.

So, since I feel like getting them straight anyway, here's a list of possibilities that would help. Some are more plausible, others less, but they are all at least possible. Not in any particular order.

- Stripperiffic space suits. Yes. It's rather amusing, but you can make a space suit far lighter and more convenient simply by making it skin-tight; punctures could still happen but then won't release air. You'd probably still wear something over it, but without pressurization of the external part. NASA keeps intending to design them, all the enabling technologies are in place, they just can't get the budget.

Benefits: Lighter, better agility, may remove the prebreathing requirement for going into space - and cheaper.

Seen in: Rocket Girls. It's not as hard as Planetes, but it's actually surprisingly plausible in retrospect. (Some components really aren't at all, but they do get the suits right.)

- Nuclear pulse engines. The Orion project. Better thrust to weight ratio and ISP than any other engine system we could currently make, but depends on detonating nuclear bombs and thus suffers from needing a large ship to be workable. Also has political issues.

Seen in: Just about every hard-SF novel ever.

- Nuclear thermal engines. Uses a fission reactor to heat some medium (often water) until it's really really hot, which is then left to shoot out the thruster. Easier to miniaturize than nuclear pulse engines, and has at least twice the ISP of a chemical rocket, while still maintaining enough thrust to fight gravity. Not very radioactive. Has been built, but is again politically troublesome and has never been used in a real rocket.

Seen.. almost nowhere. A pity, it's a good design.

- Stable antimatter, of various kinds. It's obviously the best fuel, and is needed if you want to build a (highly theoretical) pion engine, but antimatter is extremely expensive. Tiny amounts of antimatter could be used to initiate fusion, which would allow nuclear pulse engines to be drastically scaled down and also make them far more efficient - to the point of allowing interstellar hops in a reasonable amount of time.

It is believed by some that if we just try, we can generate antimatter at far higher efficiencies than today's best, by quite a lot of orders of magnitude. As it happens, the US air force is in fact trying, in order to build positronium-powered gamma-ray "lasers", ostensibly for initiating fusion in inertial containment reactors. We'll see.

- Nanotechnology, mainly nanofactories. Almost certain to arrive on the scene within 10-40 years; there will likely be difficulties (not that anyone's found any yet), but there are many paths to them, including working examples of nanofactories. (You're made of them..)

Four main benefits:
* Nanofactories make manufacturing in general cheaper, but in particular manufacturing of parts you don't need mass-produced. Space equipment will likely fall in this category for a long time.
* Most rocket failures are due to some tiny flaw. Atomically perfect manufacturing will reduce the chance of these, though incorrect assembly is of course still possible. In the limit, it may be possible to build larger assemblies as a single part in a nanofactory, eliminating even that variation.
* Colonization of other planets, or in general independence of earth, is impossible so long as you need several billion tons of industry and several million people to build everything needed by a colony. Nanofactories could drastically reduce these counts, though it won't eliminate them.
* And, of course, it reduces the penalty for complexity a lot while permitting far stronger materials in many places; having a full set of sensors in every cubic millimeter of a rocket would drastically increase safety, as most failures would be discovered a long time before they can become critical.

- The space elevator. You mentioned that; I'm relatively certain it's buildable. Materials strong enough to do it have been made in the lab, and while we've been unable to create nanotubes of suitable length, that's another thing nanofactories would greatly simplify. Failing that, it's probably possible to engineer bacteria or plants to make them.

No, they demand respect, like cops, which is an oxymoron.

Respect is what you have for people who don't demand you respect them.

No, they take what is available, not what is offered. If they only took what was offered the studios would be happy.

And we aren't training them, they're doing what they do for the same reason I do, they choose to. I wasn't conditioned against my will, neither were they.

The end of the free ride (tax-payer funded of course) that monopoly grants like patents and copyrights gave to a few select industries? Oh yes, please.

Doom and gloom unless we lock ourselves into this little box so that you can bill us properly. Oh yeah. Because doing all that for Iron Man 2 is so important.

You know that copyright isn't a god-given right, right? It's just something we came up with that helped some things at one time. When it stops being beneficial to society at large (those schoolchildren you treat like mindless cattle, and everyone else) we should get rid of it.

Of all those, I suspect Wikipedia is correct. If you plug the formula from wikipedia in wolfram alpha you get this. If you look at the AU page, that distance has been disputed. Also the approximation that the tan() can be ignored is wrong around the 8th significant digit.

Try to understand the powerful symbiosis between ambition and morality. It's not all that different from our relationship with our intestinal bacteria. The ambitious needed to create morality because slaves acting to restrain themselves is much more efficient than constantly having to physically beat them into submission. You don't need a domestic army any more. They work together to bring about our seemingly rapid "progress", if that's what we can call it. Sometimes the balance gets a bit thrown off. We will be a combo Klingon/Federation for a long time.

Marine, what is that button on your body armor?
A peace symbol, sir.
Where'd you get it?
I don't remember, sir.
What is that you've got written on your helmet?
"Born to Kill", sir.
You write "Born to Kill" on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?
No, sir.
You'd better get your head and your ass wired together, or I will take a giant shit on you.
Yes, sir.
Now answer my question or you'll be standing tall before the man.
I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
The what?
The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.

Sorry, not a big trekkie fan. Too busy cringing at the cardboard sets.

It looks like your situation is not that dire. But if you want peace of mind, get a set of switches and install them on all doors and windows. Do not rely upon motion detection in cameras, this is not very reliable. In my case it gets triggered by sudden changes in illumination (such as caused by clouds) and by tree branches moving in the wind. PIR sensors aren't much better, they can react to cold (or hot) air coming in through a window or a vent and mixing with the air within the house. But simple switches will reliably tell you if the door is opened, for example. If your house is not easy to wire this way, get wireless sensors (Z-Wave, for example, or Insteon.) You can connect the whole thing so that you get an SMS when an event occurs, and then you can review the video.

But quite importantly you need to make sure that all this hardware has a deterrent effect. For example, your motion sensors (outdoors) should produce some very obvious effect, like activating floodlights around the house, or beeping something inside the house (loud enough that it is heard outside) and so on. Otherwise you may still be burglarized, even though after the fact there would be plenty of evidence to arrest and convict. I doubt you want to build a honeypot house; you want to make sure burglars don't even try. Of course your shutters help in this department. But they may reduce the resale value of your house (and of those of your neighbors) by pointing out that the whole area is unsafe (whether this is true or not - many buyers are scaredy cats, and no amount of explanations will help if facts speak for themselves.)

And with regard to "teenage bandits" - they are unpredictable and can be more dangerous than old, seasoned burglars.