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Nocturne
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| Joined: | Wed Apr 6th, 2005 |
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Posted: Sat Jul 30th, 2005 06:10 pm |
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Just in, this is a 'real picture', it made my heart skip a beat, I loved it...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4727847.stm
for me this next article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4730061.stm
Astronomers detect '10th planet' is slightly dubious, I grew up with 9 planets, lets keep it that way 
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when will all this end?
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Psycho Gizmo
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Posted: Sat Jul 30th, 2005 06:35 pm |
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| Here's another nice one. Makes you wonder what might be going on below the surface where it's warmer and less exposed to UV radiation. Attachment: 040601_iod_mars_04-a.jpg (Downloaded 8 times) Last edited on Sat Jul 30th, 2005 06:36 pm by
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Corvus
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| Joined: | Tue Apr 5th, 2005 |
| Location: | Wisconsin USA |
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Posted: Sun Jul 31st, 2005 10:54 am |
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3397937.stm
I love reading "Have your say"
Anyhow I found this statement funny:
Do you remember when you needed oil to make pancakes, because they used to stick to the pan? Funny, but the space exploration has brought you Teflon, and if you dig Google for a while you can find there's more to space research than meets the eye, and however huge the spending seems, it's only a very small fraction of budgets for projects that we really don't want to receive any funding at all, and yet they do.
That's the problem . . . Teflon has now been found to be a carcinogen and I still need oil to make good pancakes . . . we are too quick to jump aboard.
IMO "Manned" space exploration is a waste of money . . .
I have to laugh at the comments that could be seen as bashing the US . . .
I am all for space exploration through robotic means . . . when you have to sustain human life in space, is when the costs rise tremendously.
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"In a person (not Corvus) who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness." -C. Rogers
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Psycho Gizmo
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Posted: Sun Jul 31st, 2005 12:20 pm |
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Nocturne wrote:
Astronomers detect '10th planet' is slightly dubious, I grew up with 9 planets, lets keep it that way
I noted a humourous coincidence in the feature film "K-Pax" which I came across channel-surfing yesterday.
During the initial interview of the recently-arrested "alien" Prote (Kevin Spacey) by the psychiatrist (Jeff Bridges):
Psych: (Calmly) How is it that you come from a unknown planet called K-Pax when there are only nine planets in our solar system?
Prote: (Even more calmly) Well, actually there are ten. And well, that's O.K. anyway because K-pax is not in your solar system...
Of course, the possibility of unseen planets out on the perimeter of the SS has been a matter of speculation for decades due to the extreme difficulty of making observations from Earth of non-luminous objects in deep space - like looking from a thousand miles away for a marble-sized particle of coal in a background of black velvet the size of the state of Texas. Relative to the "Vault of Heaven" even a planet the size of the newly-discovered one (twice the size of Pluto) is nearly invisible at a distance of close to 100 astronomical units (9 billion miles), even if our most powerful telescopes are looking right at it.
Maybe all the people in Hollywood really are geniuses with connections to benevolent aliens....Not! Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. Besides, if you count recently discovered planetoid Sedna as a planet proper,(as some astronomers do), there are now eleven known planets, not ten. I got a chuckle out of it though.
There were at least a couple of inconsistancies in the K-Pax story line however. That Prote had to wear sunglasses because "Earth's sun is so bright" does not square at all with his supposed origins on a planet with more than one sun. The net luminosity of a planet with two suns in close proximity would almost definitely be much brighter than Earth, so if anything, he'd need something like night-vision to help him see on a planet with only one sun.
Another has to do with a prisoner/mental patient being allowed to wear sunglasses at all. The first thing that the authorities would take away (probably at the scene of the arrest) would be the sunglasses, then later in the psychiatric hospital because psychologists need to observe the behavior of patient's eyes in interviews to measure their emotional responses - especially related to eye-contact with the therapist for honesty or aversion.
The film K-Pax was sort of charming, small errors in logic notwithstanding. I also note that it took some Tom Cruise-like swipes at the psychiatric community and their torrid love affair with psychotropic drugs as basic treatment for psychosis. It is obvious to me that Cruise has hit a very sore spot with the Doctor's Guild, or they wouldn't be trying so hard to discredit and stultify him (with much help from the leftist media establishment), they'd just ignore him.
Me thinks that the psychiatrists protest too much.
Bridges' "Dr. Powell" played advocate for the Eric Fromme/Carl Jung-derived therapeutic attitude of being friendly and accepting of a psychotic's point of view "interacting with the patient in their own experiential world," rather than brow-beating or drugging them into wholly accepting everything about "reality" in the "sane" world. A similar theme emerged in the Philip K. Dick SF classic, "VALIS" when Horselover Fat's psychiatrist does not resist his "theological explanations" for his difficulties, but rather fully reinforces and enables his "psychotic ideas of reference" in an effort to help him.
The director/writers of K-Pax borrowed heavily from the mood and techniques of Robert Wise's classic film, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" as a Spacey did the character Prote the way a more-soft-spoken, laid-back Michael Rennie might have done Klaatu.
Nikto Barata! - PG
Attachment: kpax5.jpg (Downloaded 4 times) Last edited on Sun Jul 31st, 2005 01:18 pm by
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