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Comment Re:The Eagle (Score 1) 39

I suppose one could argue that you want the more dselicate computers behind the pilot, since then it has the greatest achievable shielding on all sides without having excessive distance from the flight controls and without becoming inaccessible if the pod that is loaded into the middle is not traversible. Similar reasoning is used in Formula 1 - delicate bits of the car (such as the fuel tank) are placed between the driver and the engine, to keep them as safe as possible without creating a burden. This would necessitate there being a step down to get to the pilot's chair. It's not a particularly good piece of "lore repair" but it's the best I can do.

Comment Re:The Eagle (Score 1) 39

The landing pads are also vertical thrusters (which is how they can skim), so you need space for the nozzle, engine, and fuel. The size of the landing pads would seem fine, given everything that needs to be in them.

I'm calculating mass in terms of filled volume. The entire mid-section of the Eagle was a mesh of girders, rather than a solid hull. Since the total space filled is 1/Nth that of a solid hull that has to be able to handle the same rotational forces, the total mass is reduced. The cross-hatch patterning is likely to be good there, as it's strong along those lines. We don't need to specifically know what the material is, or the specific mass, as long as we can use engineering techniques to figure out the percentage of material we need relative to having a solid hull.

Comment Re:The Eagle (Score 2) 39

That's true of all sci-fi, by nature. The challenge, though, is to make it as plausible as possible. The "traditional" rule (variously ascribed to Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov) was that good sci-fi was allowed to violate one law of physics (although this had to be justified and explained) but everything else shoud be as plausible as possible. S:1999, as a whole, certainly did not comply with that, but if we restrict ourselves to the Eagle, then I'd say that it would just about pass muster there.

Comment The Eagle (Score 5, Insightful) 39

Let's look at the various aspects of the Eagle design.

1. It was "designed to work in space" so wasn't designed to be aerodynamic
2. It was modular
3. Mass was kept to a minimum without compromising strength, which is precisely what you would want if your job is to carry a significant mass in space and be able to manoever without ripping apart
4. Cockpits were functional and minimal, not glamorous or more advanced than necessary to do the job

There were terrible aspects as well (nowhere to keep fuel, for example), but if you were going to design a sci-fi ship that is intended to be a simple short-range transport, then the design for the Eagle is close to perfect in a way that most sci-fi vessels really aren't.

Brian Johnson really did a superb job of actually making something LOOK like a practical workhorse.

Comment Re:Polls don't vote (Score 1) 226

The Brexit referendum in 2016 did NOT permit all British registered voters to vote. This was taken to court multiple times.

The number of people who were entitled to vote was very tightly restricted. Access to a polling station was limited. There were many factors that could result in you being excluded. Postal ballots were largely not permitted, even though they were officially allowed. If you were overseas at that precise moment, you couldn't vote. You had to specially register to vote for it, but the website (which not everyone could access, strangely enough) was only up erratically. Those in the Isle of Man, although full British citizens, were not permitted to vote, for example.

Comment Re:Good old Labour (Score 1, Flamebait) 147

I don't even understand what died in Britain this time. Surely even before today it was up to the parents to purchase a phone or a tablet or any type of a computer and give it to their children. There is no way for google or anyone to know who is using a phone or a tablet. Today with AI I suppose it is possible to use filters to attempt automatic detection of the person who is livestreaming and allow AI decide if this person is old enough and if not the livestream will then be terminated (or prevented). This will teach children a few things. First of all it will teach them about VPNs, it will also teach them about disguising their identity to the computer, who is looking at them, while they are showing themselves off to the world. They will find new and creative ways to get around these restrictions, they will not 'innocently play', as politicians are promising. There will not be a return to the "good old days". Parents will set up phones and tablets for their offspring because it is easier than to parent and that will be that.

Comment The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher (Gatto, 2006) (Score 1) 260

From NYS Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto: https://www.informationliberat...
        "Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do at the time, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. The license I hold certifies that I am an instructor of English language and English literature, but that isn't what I do at all. I don't teach English, I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.
        Teaching means different things in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. You are at liberty, of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when I say I intend no irony in this presentation. These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you will. ...
          How did these awful places, these "schools", come about? Well, casual schooling has always been with us in a variety of forms, a mildly useful adjunct to growing up. But "modern schooling" as we know it is a by-product of the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our own industrial poor. Partly, too, total schooling came about because old-line American families were appauled by the native cultures of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigrants of the 1840s and felt repugnance towards the Catholic religion they brought with them. Certainly a third contributing factor in creating a jail for children called school must have been the consternation with which these same "Americans" regarded the movement of African-Americans through the society in the wake of the Civil War.
        Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And over time this training has shaken loose from its own original logic: to regulate the poor. For since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to the point that it now seizes the sons and daughters of the middle classes as well. ..."

Comment Re:Queue the jealousy and entitlement (Score 1) 315

You are suggesting quite a few things, except you don't like to actually say directly what it is that you want to happen. Here is one thing you said: "Elon Musk should be a wealthy man, no doubt about it but a trillionaire or hell even a $100B is a failure of our economy, our culture, our society or our politics." - 100B is not Musk anymore, it's more than Musk, who I consider to be a con artist.

What you are implying to calling 100B owner a failure of economy and culture and society and politics is that it should be impossible for some reason for a person to accrue enough ownership of private resources to be at that level. It is your inadequacies that are showing here and it is your word play that we are debating. What you are suggesting is oppression and tyranny, nothing less, which is what is required for a person not to be able to accrue any amount of wealth regardless of how it is obtained.

How about this: "I mean, he does. He also still is one person with 24 hours a day, does he actually provide enough productivity to justify tens of millions every day?" - nobody has to justify anything, if they are able to accrue some wealth beyond your imagination does not make it wrong that a person should be able to do so.

To this I have already answered: "Explain this (i am fully anticipating Libertarian-Randian gobbledygook)" - obviously a large amount of accumulated wealth is represented by a business and this business clearly benefits the society much more than the individual who runs it, otherwise the company wouldn't be valuable enough for you to pay attention how wealthy the owner of this company becomes.

This: "Everything you said would equally apply if he was worth $1B as it does $1000B so what does he need the extra 999B? His lifestyle changes 0%. He can still own and run companies." - implies that a person shouldn't be able to have ownership in a company that is growing in value, Musk or anyone else. So if you build a company that becomes so valuable people invest into it enough that its market share, its profits are so large that the value exceeds 100B (on paper, doesn't matter). If you are the single largest owner of the stock in this company your shares go above and beyond 1B.

You are pretending that you are not suggesting confiscation (oppression by the voting majority) yet what else are you suggesting? Be clear, what are your demands and goals? I already see the reasons, jealousy and ideology with a strange belief that a person shouldn't be able to own something of serious value for some reason.

This: "And I would ask just the same what the unhealthy fixation on defending the massive wealth inequality?" - I am FOR wealth inequality, it's the only thing that actually motivates people to move forward with business ideas in the first place. If wealth equality was the goal, nobody would be ruining their lives trying to run a business.

This: " I'll guess if I ask for the alternative you'll point to "communism" and I will just say you are not a serious person with a serious position. Like I said, Randian nonsense." - you are the one bringing up communism and Randian ideas, whatever, you are fixated on the nomenclature.

This: "You say you want to "protect private property" as if what I am suggesting eliminates private property in any fashion." - of course you are. You are suggesting this exact thing, you wouldn't be happy until there wouldn't be "wealth inequality". This requires that people cannot own things cannot operate things as they see fit, cannot go beyond some artificial number that is stuck in your head. You think 1B is plenty and 100B is too much, whatever that is all about. In reality it's all garbage. A person who made a billion dollar company can use the money that he makes to start more companies and eventually go much further than 1B dollars and this bugs the shit out of you because you are on a mission.

Comment Re:Polls don't vote (Score 1) 226

The UK mostly doesn't do voter suppression. However, they did for the Referendum. Basically, anyone who might not be racist was not permitted to vote.

Even then, 48% still insisted on staying in the EU.

One of the reasons the UK doesn't do voter suppression the way the US does is because (until very recently) the House of Lords had a lot of people in it who owed no favours at all to the political elite but did have a huge responsibility to making sure that things functioned in the long term. This has since been corrupted, so the HoL is no longer anything like as independent and politically neutral as it once was. Rather, the two main parties have stuffed it full of sycophants, which makes it useless. Which, of course, was the intended effect.

Because those in the HoL were partly hereditary (and therefore not under anyone's thumb and impossible to manipulate) and partly chosen on actual merit (they'd done stuff that was actually impressive and good for the country), the HoL were the true guardians of the Constitution and the nation. The House of Commons has always been corrupt and degenerate, so a parallel system that politicians couldn't control meant their worst excesses would always be curbed. The HoL has defended the common person FAR FAR more often than anyone in the Commons ever has.

This didn't make the HoL perfect, or even advisable to retain in its historic form, but it made it immune to the corruption that we were seeing in the rest of the system. What we needed was a replacement system that retained that immunity and improved on it.

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