Moontanman

Sounds like a job for Roundup! It's not going to fall down immediately if you use poison, it takes weeks for it to die and then months to rot to the point of limbs falling off. Is it on your property?

I've exchanged messages with Dr. Foot about mirror matter, he has yet to show it's existence, this seems like quite a divergence from what he describes in his Book. http://books.google.com/books/about/Shadowlands.html?id=3evE2K-ylVIC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_matter http://www.technologyreview.com/view/418687/first-evidence-that-mirror-matter-may-fill-the/

You are so antagonistic you make it very difficult to support your point of view. I do not appreciate having words put into my mouth, when i said we should fight to win if we fight at all I was agreeing with you. Wars should be fought to win but guerilla fighters that melt back into the population are difficult to fight, the Soviets found this out in Afghanistan as we did in Vietnam. We are not fighting a population that yearns to be free and welcomes us with open arms. We would be better off to simply pull out and destroy any military bases that show up from a distance, the people who attacked us were only able to do so because we weren't expecting it. To make these people surrender we would have to kill most of them and the ones that surrendered would always have to be watched closely. It is truly a loosing proposition. Unless you are willing to kill virtually everyone there winning is not going to happen... Every time you kill a man his sons and other family members become fighters, how do you fight that? This is not NAZI Germany waging a war between governments there is hardly a government there to start with and if you think it's not about religion you are naive, the Taliban is all about religion, religious zealots is all they really are and threat of hell fire is a pretty good motivator to a culture that steeped in religion...

yeah! let's nuke em...

I would have thought it was much easier to show a Dem talking insane crap, I mean they are the anything goes party aren't they? That's pretty much what Fox News says... no wait, maybe Fox can tell us some crazy stuff Dems say... They are so truthful and all I am sure they wouldn't spin it...

Coffee with Claire, this week yet another theist calling for gays to be rounded up and killed, Romney's new running mate and his batshit crazy views plus more...

I call BS on that rigney, can you really say you don't care what a political candidate believes in? What if he believes he was abducted by aliens? I don't wrap them all in the same cloth, just the YEC's, you are not reading what I type dude... Being Christian or even religious in general doesn't make you batshit crazy, believing in things that are demonstrably not true makes you batshit crazy. Every last one of the republican presidential candidates said they didn't believe in evolution, except for Huntsman and he paid the price for either not being a lair or not being crazy. They all profess to believe in stuff we know is not true or do not believe in stuff we know is true. On a local level almost across the board republicans go for batshit crazy, I think this is an important point, I do not want someone that is disconnected from reality in government, it's difficult to believe you do... The republicans have been fighting all across the US to have creationism taught in public schools, this is unacceptable, if someone believes this then teach it in church. It's also interesting that they don't want any other religious views taught in school, just theirs... The whole religious agenda they want to force on everyone else is unacceptable but the fact that to actually want what they want to be taught as reality is either a lie or it makes them willfully ignorant, no other choice and they are using this lie/crazy to influence people who don't know any better... As for Biden... compare him to Romney's running mate, a tea party darling, he would be a heart beat away from being president, now that is scary...

This is not exactly spot on topic but it is an interesting take on humans eating meat vs vegetables. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/08/08/early-meat-eating-human-ancestors-thrived-while-vegetarian-hominin-died-out/

Seriously rigney, you think these gaffs are the equivalent of believing the Earth is 6000 years old, dinosaurs and humans lived together and dragons are real? Biden might be seriously inept or even a dumb ass but this is not the same as believing in dragons. What's next, leaving out milk for fairies passed into law?

Rigney if he was the only one you would have a point but the Republican party is currently fielding many people like this, in fact not believing in YEC is enough to prevent you from being elected as a republican...

This, bold part, pretty much says it all for me, neither party is really independent of the monetary influence of corporations, banks and other groups with the money to buy our legislators. I think the right is in an unholy alliance with religion as well, I think both sides entered into the relationship thinking they were going to control the other but religion has a huge influence from it's fringes that is impossible to deal with rationally. The power block that is formed by religion and money has an influence that is hard to escape. Religion to a great extent is driven by it's fringes, even though the majority of religious people privately disagree with the agenda religious fringes are pushing opposing them gets you a label that is difficult to deal with. Eventually much like the civil rights issues that we were forced to deal with in the 60's, when white people who supported the rights of black people got you labeled as somehow betraying your own race, people are going to have to decide whether or not the religious fringe can continue to dictate to the rest of us by insinuations of betrayal of God. This type of influence is quite powerful, in private most white people would admit that the racism of the time was wrong but defying it took great courage but eventually enough white people stood up to be counted and the result was the repeal of both laws and attitudes that really defiled us all. Now the religious fringes are asserting things that most of us recognize as wrong in a very basic way but standing up to these fringes will be difficult. The assertion of if you are do not believe without question then you cannot be a Christian is very powerful even though you know it's not correct. Only by the intimidation of the rational religious people can people like Allen Quist gain power, only by convincing a large part of the population they have to believe in crazy shit can people like Allen Quist or Michele Bachman gain influence. Fear mongering is their bread and butter, they have to instill unreasonable fear into people, this fear is what fundamentalist religions use to control people in the light of reason their stance falls apart like snowflakes in the summer sun...

Do you really think I am sitting here all red faced over what you are saying??? hehehe, that's funny Get your self a bucket of sand and a large hammer, pound the sand thoroughly for 4 hours, see what you get...

Show me some progressives who are batshit crazy and being promoted as the best the party has and I'll be all over them. Both parties have people who are crazy but I see no progressives being supported despite being batshit crazy... Why should i chill out? You certainly are not chilling out, you consistently post stuff praising your party and it's members, usually based on nonsense, you want me to stop? go pound sand...

No rigney you are not in Minnesota, and he is not the only Republican that is batshit crazy and accepted by the party as the best they have. If this jackass wins he will go to Washington and vote based his batshit crazy world view. He is not alone rigney, on a local level his spiritual brothers are in office every where looking to climb up, by voting a straight ticket you will be voting for nutters like this. As for Biden better him than someone like Allen Quist...

If you agree on the last post why did you make the first one? Communists might have officially not believed in God but the people never accepted that more than a small minority, cults of personality can and do arise in most societies. Your OP is the polar opposite from the last one, what is up with that? In the US our freedoms are guaranteed by the constitution, not religion, we needn't go communist or dictator to have an atheistic society. In fact I think it can be asserted that the US is and always has been a secular government, the people are allowed to believe what they want as long as what they believe doesn't advocate harming others. So far you have failed to make a connection between atheism and euthanasia or any restriction of the rights of others for that matter. But it is fairly easy to show a connection between religion and the restriction of the rights of others, look at the middle east for clues... You have also made an assertion that atheism = Social Darwinism, can you support that? Social Darwinism is at best an antiquated belief system that has been shown to be less than optimal many years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism Social Darwinism is an artifact of the past, had little if anything to do with atheism, and has long been discredited...

What is your question here?

I am not in possession with the tools to figure this out for sure but the slingshot thing is for speed to save time, we have never escaped the Sun's gravity well. Well the pioneer probes have but as long as they stay within the solar system we do not have to achieve the escape velocity of the Sun. But my point is that if we can send Curiosity to Mars we could send it or one much like it to Titan as well. Titan is an interesting place for sure. Do we really need to send several probes all increasingly bigger and complicated or could we just skip over the small probes and start out with a Curiosity type rover? I look forward to knowing how difficult it would be as well. My money is on Titan would be much easier to survive than Venus.

Well then if you were in Minnesota you would be voting for the guy who believes in dragons... This guy is not some lone nutter, he has already won the republican primary, did you not watch the video?

Well then the next Curiosity should be on Titan

Bill, can you tell me why you think an atheistic society would do such horrific things and not a religious society? As far as I know there has never really been an atheistic society but many religious societies have done some pretty horrific things in the name of god.

Bignose is a publisher? I have this series of poems and short stories....

I was under the impression that Curiosity was nuclear powered...

Yes this is true and in the US you would have no problem finding individuals who agree with them but that doesn't make us an atheistic society nor does being an atheist mean you would agree with that. Sociopaths are a part of society, they occur in the religious and as well as the non religious. your assertion that an atheistic society would do those things automatically is false... If our leader was a pagan would that mean you are a pagan? We are protected by a bill of rights and a constitution, we could choose to follow such a path but to say the leaders didn't believe in your religion makes them atheists or makes the entire country atheistic is false... Now if you want to continue this track of conversation please make a new thread, this is off topic as the Cap'n pointed out...

I think our ideas around freedoms is defined by where we live, in some societies freedom means something different to them than it does to us in the West or even in the US. In Afghanistan freedom is to them not what we think of as freedom, We think nothing of a woman at the beach in a bikini, there she would be ostracized (if she was lucky) and everyone would agree it was the right thing to do. Here we can call bollocks on our religious leaders and while some might take offense the majority wouldn't raise an eyebrow there you might be killed and everyone would think it was the right thing to do. Freedom there is more of group idea rather than an individual idea.

Could a copy of the Curiosity Rover be sent to Saturn's moon Titan? Would this be far more difficult to do? I have read, some place, that once you get out of the Earth's gravity well you can go anywhere in the solar system with the same or close to the same amount of energy, time is the factor that changes. Would the Curiosity Rover survive on Titan or is Titan too cold? I know Venus is a hard nut to crack but is the cold of Titan a similar barrier?