aeroguy

And not "Stalingrad"? In my opinion the best war movie ever made, and with Germans speaking German and Russians speaking Russian. Speaking of war movies, I also loved "A Midnight Clear". Let's just say I'm not a big fan of action movies with happy endings...

Only in mathematics then... I suppose you could come up with ways to prove just about anything... Why do you put that _ below the last 9?

I don't know what Zeno's paradox is, but I do know that 0.999 of the fuel load needed to fly the full distance will make you drop in the drink... Still convinced that 1 and 0.999 is the same thing?

Top 3: The Right Stuff http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/ Life of Brian http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/ Lawrence of Arabia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/

People in general. You yourself stated that you haven't bought the package straight off. But some people do. The accept an entire dogma, hook, line and sinker! They're then right, in their own minds, and everything that differs from the main line is wrong. I suppose they feel comfort in numbers, in that the views they've adopted are shared (however falsely) by a large number of people. At the same time, they feel they don't have to accept personal responsibility for what they believe or how they act following their beliefs, since the views aren't really their own... My own principle is that you should learn as much as is reasonably possible about something before you form a firm opinion. And even then should you be open-minded and prepared to reject your previous stand on an issue if you're presented with new information and evidence. When I was younger, someone said to me that "you're NOT entitled to your opinion, you're only entitled to your INFORMED opinion". I was so sure of everything back then, so that statement had me fuming. Today, I know it's true. Too many people are too certain of too many things, when they really don't have a clue. Now, I don't mean that people don't have the right to say what they want, but when they claim that they're right, when they really don't know anything, that's something I can't stand.

I've always had a hard time understanding how people are able to simply adopt an entire belief system (and I'm not talking about religion here) without question. Personally, I don't fit in at all well in any of our political parties in Sweden. Although I'm generally left wing, I share many views with right-wing parties where those aren't held by the left. Our leftist parties tend to be extremely anti-globalisation, anti-internationalism and quite isolationistic. There's a very clear "we're better than everyone else, so we'll stick to ours" sentiment amongst that lot. I'm very much for the EU project and the Euro currency project within it, but those are other major issues that the leftist parties fight and oppose loudly. The environmental issues are extremely important to me, but only one party here seems to understand the whole deal, and that's our green party. Except for the fact that they don't see that, for now, our best option is to KEEP our nuclear power plants, until we have decent alternatives. They're bent on shutting them all down as soon as possible. With nuclear power supplying around half of our nation's electricity, we simply can't be without it. Yet, one reactor (out of twelve) has been permanently shut down, and as a consequence, we're forced to import electricity during peak loads (winter), and that imported electricity is mostly being generated in dirty coal or oil power plants in Central Europe. So, we've shut down a working, safe (by international standards) and fairly economical power supply, only to import from a polluting, and more radioactive (during normal operation), source... Well done, greens... Here, again, two right-wing parties see the advantage of nuclear power (in our case - it's not applicable everywhere). Many right-wing parties also see the need for individualism on a personal level where the left see the need for more of a form of misguided equality. People with special needs (especially children) tend to be stuck in a system that's supposed to treat everyone equal. However, the problem is that very little flexibility is allowed for to cater for those who don't fit the mould. Bright and gifted children are often left languishing when the order of the day is to assume that every child has the same potential, and should be treated accordingly. The result? Only a middle-of-the-road minority get an education that's just right. Everyone else is stuck in a system where they don't quite fit. Ideals can sometimes get in the way of reality. The dogma is more important than accepting that it can't always be right... That's enough for now, I think...

What about the genetic differences? The top athletes have advantages giving similar results. I know of one guy here in Sweden who got caught in a doping test, but claimed he was innocent. His testosteron levels were above the legal limit. Of his free will, he locked himself up and had doctors take tests when he had no access to any drugs, and his levels were still just as high. He was cleared. I remember taking a "blood count" a few years back. I was very close to the limit for that test value. It's not difficult to imagine some people exceeding it naturally.

An American man held a pilot's licence and flew until he was 102 years old. He died recently, aged 104!

Return to the Moon: by 2015 at the earliest. First Mars mission: no earlier than 2030. Moon base: maybe by 2040-2050. Mars settlement: 2060-2080. And I'm a very optimistic person! The main problem is of course, as always, funding. And that problem won't go away anytime soon. I firmly believe we should invest all our "space money" in probes, landers, rovers and orbiters. And telescopes. And Earth sciences satellites. I'd also like to see a probe going out to Pluto. Manned spaced flights should be limited to LEO missions. They're not worth the money. It's nice enough for "glory points", but not much else, yet. It would be pretty cool if I lived to see a high-speed probe going out to where one of the Voyager probes is now. I reckon that with beefed-up RTGs and ion propulsion units, coupled with solar sails (for the inner part - for speed), a probe could reach that far in less than half the time it took Voyager.

ST: TNG for me. I don't like the dark, dystopian stories. Star Trek is very much about exploring, meeting new life forms. Both things that appeal to me a lot! It's not a perfect universe, but they try to uphold nice ideals. Equality. Peace. Non-interference (Prime Directive). It's also quite philosophical compared to most of the other shows. I agree that B5 has many of the same qualities, but it's not quite up there in my book... But I'm also a very visual person. The Star Trek universe, the ships, the uniforms and pretty much everything else, are clean and very nicely designed! I don't believe in the fanciful shapes you find in so many of the other series (the ship in Andromeda being a particularly horrible example!). Lexx is fun and a bit sexy (Wist anyone? Hehe!), so it's in a different league. Humour always wins with me, but it's not ST. ST: VOY is almost up there with TNG, but it didn't have quite as good a cast as TNG. The doctor and Neelix are two of the exceptions. It did look better though. The beautiful visual style of TNG was refined further, and lighting improved as well. It's interesting to see how they've reused the TNG character styles for many of the VOY equivalents. Enterprise is strange. You get the impression that they're in a sub rather than a starship. The cast is not right at all. Again, the medical doctor is the exception, but that's probably just my need for humour shining through once more... ST: DS9... No, not good at all. I really don't understand it. Weak characters and poor stories for the most part. I suppose it's missing that element of exploration and adventure that I like so much. ST: TOS... Funny and somewhat entertaining, but only a very small number of episodes are any good. It's very hard to see past all the 60s stuff... SG1 and X-Files don't qualify as sci-fi in my world, but I guess it's up to anyone to decide that. Of the two, only X-Files is worth watching. X-Files is, in my opinion THE best show ever produced. But that only goes for the first few seasons. I haven't even seen the ones with the new guy. The chemistry between Mulder and Scully was half the fun, so without that, the show's nothing. The scenography, photography, lighting, editing, soundtrack, mood and cast are all absolutely outstanding. But, as I said, not quite sci-fi to me... SG1? - Silly silly stuff. Truly weird. I haven't seen Farscape, Earth: Final Conflict or Firefly, so I can't comment on those. Can't say I've even heard of them!

Programmed death is a consequence of evolution in combination with limited resources.

If you'd actually bother to read my posts properly, you'd see that I mean that consciousness doesn't simply "turn on" by the 24th week. It's a gradual process. And again, the 24th week is not MY choice of limit, it's just what the law says. I don't like abortions! Don't get me wrong there. But as long as we have a society where people are reckless, there has to be a way to correct the mistakes. You could lower the legal limit to, say, the 12th week, but the lower you go, the greater the risk that the mother doesn't even know she's pregnant. Especially if she's young and doesn't have fully regular menstrual cycles yet. And especially not if her only sexual education came from her teenage girl friends or from some teen magazine. With the weight problems many girls have today, a growing stomach wouldn't necessarily be noticed until quite late. I'd advocate the pills you take the day after. I think we can safely say that a day-old embryo isn't conscious.

Elephants get that heavy? I'm all right, but thanks for the concern Phi!

But they only hold the balance of power in a few questions. Most of the time, there simply is no divide they can straddle. Again, the more parties you have in the parliament, the less of an effect the small parties have, because agreement on various issues don't tend to follow party lines, so you rarely have the left-right (for example) split. In other questions, you might have a three- or four-way split even.

Oh man, this was entertaining! The universe has existed for a bit more than a dozen billion years. Our planet has been here for around a third of that. Life on Earth appeared maybe 3.5-4 billion years ago. Humans have been around for a few hundred thousand years. A million years from now, it's possible that human beings, or at least descendants of the human race, still live here, perhaps not a lot unlike how we live today. But given a another few million years, I really don't think any human civilisation remains. The human race has become extinct. Ants will still build their mounds and wage their microwars. Birds will still sing when the sun rises in the morning. The cherry tree will still blossom as beautifully as ever every year. But there will be no human beings left to witness it all. For the moment, we think we're the rulers of the world. And we are, in a sense, but I don't think we have much say in our future destiny. Not on a time scale of hundreds of thousands of years. In the same sense, civilisations elsewhere in the universe, if any indeed have existed, exist today or will exist in the future, will almost certainly have a limited life span. Be it hundreds of thousands of years, or millions. In a billion years, we can fit a thousand million-year civilisations. In 10 billion years, we can fit a hundred thousand hundred-thousand-year civilisations. If we aren't perfectly matched both in evolutionary pace and timing, as well as technologically, neither will ever be aware of the other's existence. Even if two civilisations happen to be perfectly matched on a sort of absolute time scale, if we're too far apart, the speed of light will make any percieved simultaneity impossible. Outside a few hundred light years, communication will be pretty much limited to one way.