loqi's Comments
Re: Terraforming Venus Part 1
The floating cities would be held up by buoyancy and subject to high speed winds on Venus. It would be a huge technical challenge to keep them geostationary. They'd experience daylight cycles of days, not months.
Sagan had updated his terraforming proposal in light of discoveries by the Venus probes. He says it would be impossible to split enough of the CO2 because surface atmospheric pressure is too high. Once a large amount of CO2 had been separated into graphite and O2, the high-pressure oxygen-rich atmosphere would soon burn the carbon back into CO2 faster than any biological process could cut CO2 levels enough to significantly alter the greenhouse effect.
Sagan had updated his terraforming proposal in light of discoveries by the Venus probes. He says it would be impossible to split enough of the CO2 because surface atmospheric pressure is too high. Once a large amount of CO2 had been separated into graphite and O2, the high-pressure oxygen-rich atmosphere would soon burn the carbon back into CO2 faster than any biological process could cut CO2 levels enough to significantly alter the greenhouse effect.
Re: Amazing Realistic Animation by Activision
Kill it! Kill it with fire, before the blackness of the Nothing inside its mouth consumes us all!
Re: Sam Harris: On Interpreting Scripture
I suppose it's possible that public policy is occasionally corrupted by Manchester United hooligans or the Oakland Raider Nation. Religious kooks do that all the time, though.
Fortunately, these days, they have to settle for pushing their insane beliefs into the family law code, tax code, and public school science textbooks. Outside the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, it's been a century or two since they've been allowed to legally conduct public mass executions in the service of their religion.
Fortunately, these days, they have to settle for pushing their insane beliefs into the family law code, tax code, and public school science textbooks. Outside the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, it's been a century or two since they've been allowed to legally conduct public mass executions in the service of their religion.
Re: Earthquakes Can Turn Water Into Gold
He's not saying earthquakes cause nucleosynthesis of gold atoms. He's saying earthquakes might be vaporizing gold atoms from deep rock, which condense on the surface, gradually accumulating into recoverable deposits.
Re: Sam Harris: On Interpreting Scripture
It's because Yahweh is a whiny, petulant little attention whore with a taste for obscene levels of violence.
Infinite punishments for finite non-crimes indicates that God is evil and/or bad at math, or that God is an imagining of an extremely primitive society.
Infinite punishments for finite non-crimes indicates that God is evil and/or bad at math, or that God is an imagining of an extremely primitive society.
Re: Food, Inc. Full Movie
1. Nobody's claiming that eating a kilo of organic, fair-trade sugar per day won't lead the same place. That stuff doesn't get pushed on us through a constant barrage of advertising, though. The "industrial food system" does indeed push sugar water and fried crap all day long.
2. How do you reckon the E. coli got on the bean sprouts? (Strokes beard while furrowing brow and staring intently at wall. Hmmm.)
3. While it's true that the industrial food corporations have been busily strong-arming legislators to widen organic standards so they can drive a crop duster through, I still have this irrational belief that spraying less poison on my food is "somehow" better for me and safer than spraying more poison on my food.
4. It's irrelevant that somebody somewhere is attempting to bootleg some patented something-or-other. Monsanto *does* sue farmers for having their fields contaminated by their neighbor's crops. That's a matter of public record.
5. Actually, those who raise meat industrially tend to be themselves treated like animals by the agribusiness corporations up the line. In recent years, they've been moving to a contract farming model, where the growers do all the work and take on all the risk of failure, and get paid progressively less each year. That squeezes everything down the line, including their workers, the animals, and whatever poor sap ends up eating the meat.
The solution to feeding so many people could be a dystopia of progressively crappier, more toxic food; or it could be a stable population (not the topic of the film). I'm not clear on how the consolidation of farming into ever fewer corporate hands, and the standardization of plants and animals for industrial processes leads to more diverse food. Perhaps you mean that corn is diversifying in its industrial applications, finding its way into our bodies through more diverse delivery vectors.
2. How do you reckon the E. coli got on the bean sprouts? (Strokes beard while furrowing brow and staring intently at wall. Hmmm.)
3. While it's true that the industrial food corporations have been busily strong-arming legislators to widen organic standards so they can drive a crop duster through, I still have this irrational belief that spraying less poison on my food is "somehow" better for me and safer than spraying more poison on my food.
4. It's irrelevant that somebody somewhere is attempting to bootleg some patented something-or-other. Monsanto *does* sue farmers for having their fields contaminated by their neighbor's crops. That's a matter of public record.
5. Actually, those who raise meat industrially tend to be themselves treated like animals by the agribusiness corporations up the line. In recent years, they've been moving to a contract farming model, where the growers do all the work and take on all the risk of failure, and get paid progressively less each year. That squeezes everything down the line, including their workers, the animals, and whatever poor sap ends up eating the meat.
The solution to feeding so many people could be a dystopia of progressively crappier, more toxic food; or it could be a stable population (not the topic of the film). I'm not clear on how the consolidation of farming into ever fewer corporate hands, and the standardization of plants and animals for industrial processes leads to more diverse food. Perhaps you mean that corn is diversifying in its industrial applications, finding its way into our bodies through more diverse delivery vectors.
Re: Ambiguously Gay Duo: The Dark Clenched Hole of Evil
'T the hell was ambiguous about that?
Re: How Does Glue Work? James May's Q&A
I had no idea that Vsauce was Lilliputian.
Re: Sean Hannity Battles Keith Ellison
Why does everybody seem to think the executive branch sets the budget?
Re: Cool Stunt from Rooftop of a Cottage
It's extra cool to watch him dig himself out.
Re: The Newsroom - Opening Scene (Wow!)
Ah, the good old days... when the wealthiest nation state was motivated by altruism, and fewer adults believed in angels.
Re: South Korean Human Jumbotron
You're thinking of those cheap Chinese human jumbotrons.
It's too expensive to stop destroying our own life support system. You know... the one we got for free.
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