Letters to the Editor
zzz05
Published Letters: 431 Editor's Choice: 9
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you can't get there from here
[Read the article: Peak oil explains lack of UFOs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]another possibility, of course: it may just be impossible. we like to think that technology can overcome anything, but look at time travel instead: now, clearly, with essentially infinite time in the future, if time travel could be invented, it would. but we don't see time travelers. if we did, then it would have been much more crowded at the crucifixion of Jesus, for instance, than it seems to have been. so maybe the same thing holds for faster than light travel, and maybe the distances between technological races are large enough that without FTL, travel just isn't realistic.
another thing that i wonder about, in a different direction, is the assumption that "intelligent life" is a prerequisite for space travel. given that insects can construct and operate beehives, spiders can construct webs, etc. it's not completely out of the question that space travel is as likely to develop by instinct as through "intelligence". given that we don't know what intelligence really means, other than thinking like we do. most of the universe runs on random processes being filtered by outcomes rather than teleological reasoning.
of course, this leaves the window open for nonphysical modes of interstellar and/or time travel; remote viewing, astral projection, whatever. but once you throw those into the mix, anything goes.
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serendipitious articles:
[Read the article: Peak oil explains lack of UFOs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“If it’s so great to be smart,” Dr. Kawecki asks, “why have most animals remained dumb?”
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The ability to learn does not just harm the flies in their youth, though. In a paper to be published in the journal Evolution, Dr. Kawecki and his colleagues report that their fast-learning flies live on average 15 percent shorter lives than flies that had not experienced selection on the quinine-spiked jelly. Flies that have undergone selection for long life were up to 40 percent worse at learning than ordinary flies.
“We don’t know what the mechanism of this is,” Dr. Kawecki said.
One clue comes from another experiment, in which he and his colleagues found that the very act of learning takes a toll. The scientists trained some fast-learning flies to associate an odor with powerful vibrations. “These flies died about 20 percent faster than flies with the same genes, but which were not forced to learn,” he said
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/science/06dumb.html?scp=9&sq=intelligence&st=nyt
"Fruit flies who were taught to be smarter than the average fruit fly tended to live shorter lives. This suggests that dimmer bulbs burn longer, that there is an advantage in not being too terrifically bright. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07wed4.html?scp=2&sq=intelligence&st=nyt
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perhaps
[Read the article: Peak oil explains lack of UFOs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]humanity is just the earth's way of getting all that carbon buried underground by plants during the carboniferous era back into the atmosphere where it belongs, so temperatures can rise back up to what they had been for most of the earth's history until the plants knocked the climate off equilibrium. once that's done, human technological civilization will be superfluous and will be killed off by the climate change. that's how negative feedback loops, as referred to so frequently by the "what AGW?" folks, work.
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china's shipping them back.
[Read the article: Gas-guzzling China]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]china has some stringent fuel efficiency standards, with a more stringent level kicking in this year. unlike US standards, they don't do "fleet average"; each model has to meet the standards, by 16 weight classes. the largest class, 5,500 lbs and over, has to meet 21 mpg by 2008. They were designed to be more stringent for the highest weight vehicles.
The 2008 Chevy Suburban in its lightest (2 wheel drive half-ton) configuration, specified weight 5,608 lbs, gets 14 mpg city 20 mpg highway by EPA estimate, with the smallest most fuel efficient engine.
The 2008 Ford Expedition EL 2 wheel drive, 5,928 lbs, gets 12/18 city/highway.
There are no vehicles currently assembled in North America which meet fuel efficiency standards to be sold legally in China.
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oh i get it
[Read the article: Peak oil explains lack of UFOs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]the aliens come here, can't find a place to park, and fly home. except for the ones who crash.
what strikes me is the lack of openmindedness in the UFO folks. can't get the concept of alien lifeforms and interstellar travel disentangled with a couple of people taking a drive in the car. if there are lifeforms coming to visit, it's not at all clear that their transportation would be anything we'd recognize as transportation, or technology, or even an artifact; and they might not be anything we'd recognize as lifeforms, let alone start dissecting.
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dyson spheres
[Read the article: Peak oil explains lack of UFOs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]btw, since nobody mentioned it, dyson spheres and any other similar symmetrical construct in "orbit" around a large body (like ringworld...) are unstable. anything circularly symmetric like that has no net gravititional force within it, due to the invere square laws cancelling out, so you can't balance gravity with orbital momentum to get an orbit at any speed/distance. i.e., the thing will have no tendency to stay where it is with regard to the sun in the center and will need constant positional correction to keep from crashing into it. which will eat up some of the energy captured when it works, as well as being disastrous if/when it fails. which might be another reason we aren't seeing dyson sphere owners dropping by to explain how to do it.
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legs spread?
[Read the article: They "might as well call themselves Slutbucks"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]good lord, for somebody who probably doesn't believe in evolution, these folks have a strange idea of what constitutes legs.
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it's not just dark roasted
[Read the article: They "might as well call themselves Slutbucks"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]naw, their coffee is just overroasted until it's burnt. lots of authorities say that.
i do like the new pikes place though. it's obvious they are going after the dunkind donies market, and vice versa.
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reinforces my faith
[Read the article: Rumsfeld blamed generals for lack of forces in postwar Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that rumsfeld might just be the only man in america dumber than bush.
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so,
[Read the article: Rick Santorum's twisted logic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]if they carried out the oklahoma city bombing today instead of back when, would we be supposed to call mcveigh and his christian idenity ties islamo-fascists? or just not go after them hard, because they were merely terrorists, not muslims? of course, we're not too hard on antiCastro terrorists, but that's different, they have swing votes.