Diche Bach

An interesting thought. I like fantasy as much as anyone else, but I think I like "simulation" even better. I don't think a desire to be 100% realistic is necessarily so "constraining." There are libraries full of fiction that never invokes fantasy, spread across dozens of disciplines.

Ah! That makes sense!

Still no clarification on why they need the "ice" that is mined from (aparently) Saturn's rings on "Ceres?" Only up to episode 3 but wife and I are enjoying it. Realistic science fiction wouldn't be very fun to watch I think.

So to get this back on topic: innovation has rarely if ever been about charity, i.e., it has almost always been about financial conflicts of interest. Not much new as far as GMO's go.

Thank you Starman4308. Psychobiological anthropologist and even though my students loved it, I think I intimidated a few of the senior faculty because I tried to do some justice to modern genetics, i.e., not merely teach Mendel and Hardy-Weinberg as if that is all there is to it. Good to hear my take that it is "more complicated than 'we' can make sense of right now" confirmed. ADDIT: Maternal licking of mice pups for example?

All this discussion probably calls that everyone have an at least baseline understanding of what a "gene" really is, or if such a thing exists pervasively enough that it is useful for the conceptual purpose it is intended to explain 'inhertance.' As far as I could tell when I last did any scholarship in that area, even geneticists are not always sure, and certainly "scientists" who toss around the word don't have a clue. Lay people are more or less completely in the dark. Just as a few appetizers: what about SNPS (a topic which serves as a good entrance to the myriad of "complications" that actually exist in how genotypes influence ontogeny)? If we have some geneticists here, people who spend ~40 hours per week studying, doing research, publishing on this stuff, the maybe they can catch us up. I realized years ago that: without going full scale professional there was not much point in trying to do more than glance over at this field to see what was up from time to time; and even LESS point in trying to keep straight whatever is going on that fits under the term "epigenesis" which is what is really important to actual phenotypic diversity. Biology does not conform to humanities desire to put it into neat pigeon holes, but that doesn't mean we as a species cannot benefit from manipulating it

I don't think copyright is "eternal." Very long lasting yes, but Shakespeare's estate is no longer making anything from his work. In fact: no, copyright expires eventually: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html

Hmmm, well I guess I'm just not familiar with any of the putative effects your listing for GMOs. I'm also not quite sure why "dealing with organisms" would make it different. Biomedical technology and drugs "deal with organisms" and many technologies and procedures can be, have been and legitimately should be copyrighted by their inventors. Should a University / Industry partner who develops a new procedure for heart transplant be able to "patent the human heart" obviously that is silly. Should they be able to patent the procedure itself? Probably not, as the procedure they developed is probably in large part pre-existing if not "public domain" methods, but perhaps adjusted in order, timing, or intensity/scale. To the extent that some aspect of their procedure depends on a truly innovative aspect of their creation, then perhaps THAT portion should be patentable. Then we come to the mechanical or pharmacological factors that they might have developed as part of this new heart transplant procedure. Same would apply here: if it is widespread or "already publicly common" = no patent if not, patentable. It would probably be a better discussion if we had a very specific case study of a "GMO" to refer to.

Here is a patent for a calcium carbide production technique. https://www.google.com/patents/US2749219 Calcium carbide is used to make acetylene. Here is what is used: Are you saying you think this patent (which is about 50 years old) is illegitimate because the materials used in it are " in nature." Everything starts from nature, and where you draw the line between it and "legitimate creative work" does not seem obvious to me.

Imagine how terrified they are going to be when they realize that our ancestors have been "genetically modfiying" both plants AND animals for millenia . . . It's true that GMOs are insidious. My dachsund has me wrapped around her little paw and gets her way most of the time . . . Insidious. ADDIT: and as for "financial conflicts of interest" well . . . that problem may be a bit more widespread than you had considered. Once upon a time, a lot of science was done by hobbyists, or people whose livelihood was not dependent on the frequency with which they publish (Darwin, Mendel, even Pasteur, Pierce, etc.). Granted, this excluded the impoverished from having a voice in science, but lets shelve that point for a second and fast forward to the early 20th century. "Publish or perish" = publish or don't get paid = financial conflicts of interest. Combine this with pervasive corruption in how "peer-reviewed" literature is conducted, and the fact that careers are based on putatively "establishing answers" not "asking good questions" and you have what we have today: Science which is so fraught with conflicts of interest (financial, ideological, political and otherwise) that it took 30 years of work by thousands of contributors to amass the sort of bullet proof scientific evidence it took to prove legally that tobacco causes cancer. Of course, everyone already knew it even the scum bags that sell the stuff. But academia stopped being "reliable" sometime after WWII, and it is not hard for a team of well-trained attorneys to convince judges and juries of this when they are being backed by an affluent, desperate, scuzzy industry trying to preserve its role in the market place. It is an interesting unintended consequence.

Can someone put in one or two sentences how this "Verlinde's Theory" is "new?" The article did not make that clear to me . . . okay hold on, Wikipedia to the rescue Entropic Gravity. So . . . seems we're all holograms now!?

Nice dissertation Bob! Good stuff

Ah I'll have to come back and re-read this when I have the game running and try this. It sounds simple!

Oh these past couple pages had me smiling! A little bit of "nationalistic competitiveness" can be a _good_ thing eh? Promotes excellence and what-not?? Anyway . . . it is sad when these things fail but at lest no one died and "space stuff" has not been doomed. We shall carry on!

Yep I watched a video of 5th Horseman doing this and that "switch to map mode" part was a huge step. The problem now though: I am having a HELLUVA time getting a rendezvous now that I got my orbit way out there, and that is even WITH precise maneuver, and KER. Not sure if I just 'forgot' how to rendezvous or if this one is a bit unusual because of the size/eccentricity plus the tiny SOI of the target?

Yeah, I resemble that remark to the extent that . . . I sometimes wind up flying through the 65km zone. I I were quicker on the maneuver node setup and execution I wouldn't have that problem. I'll set Ap to just at 70 (and I generally strive for as platykurtic of arc as possible in my initial trajectory. But by the time I switch to map mode, setup my orbital burn turn on RemoteTech's Flight Computer, switch back to map mode and click Execute for RT FC to do it for me, I'm already PAST 70km!

I didn't play for a couple months. I just hung around here for a while and motivation eventually came back! I've resumed my heavily modded 1.13 career and hope to eventually "finish it."

No problem It is a shame though that the game doesn't provide any means to determine the inclination for a celestial object the way it would be determined in real life. Kinda silly that I have to launch a satellite into an equtorial orbit and then use its "onboard computer" or whatever to determine the exact inclination of anything in the game

Just watched a Scott Manley video. It seems that it is "velocity" that is the actual moderator of these "cheaper" inclination changes. Two twenty _SEVEN_

Hmm, trippy. So 137 (not "negative 137," just straight up 137 [which is what KER is telling my my inclination is when I get my AN/DN to 0.0 relative to the target asteroid]) + 90 (which is the azimuth for "zero" inclination) = 227 (which is what I assume you meant when you wrote "223?"). So, if I launch while KSP is aligned (roughly) on the nodal line and target an azimuth of 227, that should put me in the ballpark for minimal inclination change once I achieve orbit . . . does that sound right?

I'll have to try that. So I've established, it is exactly a 137-degree inclination, which seems weird somehow. From KSC: directly east (azimuth 090) = 000.0 - degree inclination directly north (azimuth 000) = +090 inclination directly west (azimuth 270) = 180 degree inclination, no? So why is "southwest" from KSC not > 180 inclination?

It is amazing how much dV inclination changes can eat up! 1017 dV to effect a 34.1 degree change!?

Actually, it seems to be SOUTHwest. This really is the tricky part: visualizing what direction to point the space craft at launch! If you can get it into the right "ballpark" then once you get an orbit (or at lest a very long sub-orbital arc that gives you enough air time) the stock tools are sufficient (as long as you have enough dV). But that initial "which way do I start" angle off the launch pad is a toughie. This is about the fifth "simulation" flight I've done but I got the cost for sims turned down to 100 funds so not a big loss . . .

Keep watching for a while. Those guys are still out there working. He seems to mount the camera on the station once the two of them get moved to another location, probably so they can both work while they stream. But during the move he'll hold the camera and you can see the other astronaut and he has flashed a couple selfies.

Ah it is high quality right now. Most times I've looked it was a non-stream placeholder. We're getting some serious EVA action right now.