Posts by Kracklite
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to nzlemming,
Read William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum"? Rather a nice, wistful deconstruction of that sort of technocratic utopianism.
If I was in a world with jetpacks and whatnot, I'd be asking, "Where's my iPod?"
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Arsenic…
A rather more cautious blogger suggests that, no, it’s not life on Titan or Enceladus (Cassini doesn’t really have the instruments to make any direct detection of life anyway), but the possibility of life using alternative chemistry having arisen on earth in the past. A significant paper here (pdf, a couple of megs). A “shadow” biosphere has been speculated about for some time, that is, a separate origin for life on earth to that all the creepy-growy stuff we see about us and these unknown microbes may be hiding away in obscure niches – undersea vents, underground etc…
The potentially major significance is that if life can arise on the same planet more than once, using different chemistries, then the probability of life on other planets is much higher as it appears to be a more common, possibly inevitable phenomenon rather than a fluke. It would also mean that we have to rethink our search methods.
Another possibility might be a reassessment of data from the Viking landers of the 70s, which are generally thought not to have found life, but for quite some time now that conclusion has been disputed as some of the results are very tantalising and are thought by some astrobiologists to have been too conservatively interpreted.
Maybe not as exciting, but it still makes my ears get a bit pointy.
Guess you had to be there.
Well, that does fall outside the normal constraints.
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Anyway I've no desire to bore myself silly by responding to every nit-picker... Then in a year or so we'll see who was the conniving vote-grubber, or who was the paranoid 'conspiracist'
James, while I appreciate the sincerity of your feelings, your attempts at self-justification are venturing well into the realms of bad taste, are presented in very egotistical tone and are seemingly calculatedly offensive to a lot of people here. Can you understand that? Please, at least, try some tact.
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I’m reminded of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which perhaps expresses how one might feel too. To this day, you do not make jokes about the tragedy in the Great Lakes region, as many a would-be comedian has found. Another parallel is the destruction of the submarine Kursk. This is from notes written by Dmitri Kolesnikov, one of those who survived for a while in the 9th and aftmost compartment:
It’s too dark here to write, but I’ll try by feel. It seems like there are no chances, 10-20%. Lets hope that at least someone will read this. Here’s the list of personnel from other sections, who are now in the 9th and will attempt to get out. Regards to everybody, no need to be desperate. Kolesnikov.
He had written before the submarine departed on its mission this poem to his wife:
When there is a time to die
Although I try not to think about this,
I would like time to say:
My darling I love you.I don’t imagine that anyone had time.
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Gallows humour, methinks, and with the clear subtext that this is reality and not a movie in response to people who can't tell the difference and vultures in the media who want to make it one. Still, I certainly take your point.
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it is the clear failure to anticipate the potential water problem.
An interesting phrase used in the news just now "using the robot was a long shot" So was it a "clear failure"? I'm afraid that I was not, as you appear to have been, present on the discussions about using the robot. It could well have been something along the lines of, "Well, water could be a problem, but we've got to use it and if it copes, that's good." In fact, the handlers would certainly have listed the advantages and disadvantages and a calculated risk was taken.
o try and source another such robot
That is flat-out wrong in fact. Other robots are have been prepared and arrangements are being made to deliver them from both Australia and the US. However, since teleportation has not yet been accomplished above the quantum level, this is taking time. Neither have I seen racks of robots down at the local Warehouse.
appears to be doing...
Rinse and repeat.
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I’m having flashbacks to Grant Dexter’s insistence that the police re-enact Die Hard during an armed siege in which an officer had already been killed.
The obvious thing to do here is contact Hollywood and assemble a team of crack actors led by Bruce Willis to go into the mine. Lloyd Bridges and Robert Stack can back them up at the control centre, the concept designers who did all that awesome machinery in Avatar can design and build the rescue equipment, the landscape can be smoothed with CGI and if anybody's hurt, we can reveal that they're OK in the sequel or remind them to keep being the plucky comic relief, like Sam Rockwell in Galaxy Quest.
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Tom, please keep Murphy's Second Law in mind: anything that has gone wrong will get worse. The mine is unstable and a lot is uncertain and what is uncertain could kill potential rescuers. The team at work there is trying very had to make sure that things do not get catastrophically worse.
There seems to me there are two alternative narratives here.
Seems. Beware of seems This is pure speculation. As they've said, they don't know and they're planning for all possible scenarios. Do you know the cliched question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" There seem to be two possible answers... well, there aren't.
This waterproofing fiasco
The robot was not designed as mine rescue equipment, it was available for use to reconnoiter a mine. It was used because it was better to make use of it because there was a chance that it might work than not to use it, not because it was perfect. Waterproofing does not consist of throwing someone's old raincoat over it (which would foul its workings); it would entail design changes, which might turn out to be time-consuming and likely counter-productive, resulting in functional flaws. That's typical of on-the-hoof engineering.
I've heard on Nat Rad that a worker on the bore hole has been injured and had to be medevaced. This simply demonstrates that this is a dangerous, complicated situation in difficult circumstances with potentially lethal unknowns.
growing number of rescue management failures
Be prepared for more failures. There's an old "joke" amongst test pilots: The last message from the pilot of a crashing plane is heard on the radio to say, "I've tried A and that didn't work, I tried B and that didn't work, now I'm going to try-"
The point is, they don't know what will work because they can't. They know what they have available and what could work and they'll run down their list until they succeed or run out of options... and they'll try to keep that options list as long as possible.
touching child-like faith in the authorities
That is just gratuitously condescending.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Russell Brown,
However, they are specialised... ie., for pipes, not rubble-strewn mines.
I’m no engineer but...
I can't even be bothered with this. Usually it's said that everything before the "but" is bullshit. I've got an industrial design degree and I'm going to STFU about this.
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Danke, mein herr.
‘I shot the serif, but I did not shoot typography’
Applause
Whistles.