Just goes to show
Stupidity is alive and well
The announcement by NASA on Monday that Mars has flowing liquids on its surface was welcomed as tremendously exciting scientific news by intelligent and rational people. For others, it is obvious proof that the space agency is misleading the American people. Leading the pack of doubters is waning US shock jock Rush Limbaugh, …
Natural selection works just fine. The problem is that there is nothing to select against human stupidity. In fact, selection tends to *favour* stupidity, because stupid people tend to have more free time and more inclination for high volume reproduction. Smarter people tend to be too busy doing things that are genuinely worthwhile, and are generally less inclined to reproduce anyway because they care about the consequences.
"selection tends to *favour* stupidity, because stupid people tend to have more free time and more inclination for high volume reproduction. Smarter people tend to be too busy doing things that are genuinely worthwhile,"
That pretty much sums up the basic premise of The Marching Morons, published in 1951 by Cyril M. Kornbluth
"And how is this any different from any politician or large corporate?"
You're obviously not from the United States. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Where else do you think those eight billion dollar campaigns funding comes from?
The United States of America has the best government that money can buy.
Something this US citizen noticed decades ago.
Just think, this US citizen has to put up with this idiocy each and every day.
Well, there is one upside, Rush is losing listeners faster than a dying rat loses fleas. The advertisers are pulling out, as they're losing customers because of his phenomenally offensive moonbats.
Professor Tim... I like that, thanks! I wear that as a badge of success! Perhaps I should start my own poorly informed, uneducated, reactionary and shitty online blog to showt the evil, left wing, antichrist, anti-gun, degenerate, homo, lesbo, pinko, greenie hordes that I really mean business!
Soo, water on Mars is some kind of liberal-muslim plot to soften us up for an alien invasion to unite mankind under a brutal dictatorship?
There was me thinking we sent a probe to you know, probe?
Now if I was to take the same logic and apply it to say eclipses you could argue that eclipses are caused the conservative-christians in an attempt to disprove the wiccan belief system by undermining the seasons because eclipses occur every 18 months.
I like playing the totally bonkers game, it's fun and I don't need a tinfoil hat.
I had to triple check y'all hadn't written "Maoist conspiracy theorists".
Then I read further... it's worse...
If Rush makes me cry from my left eye, is that part of NASA's salty water conspiracy?
If Rush makes me cry from my right eye, his conspiracy?
If I cry from both eyes at the same time, will his brain explode, please...
Somebody find an old recording of "GOP Love Call" crooned by Slim Reagan!
Bah, all we need is to develop scrith and some way to produce it in quantity - like a matter converter. Simple (if you write a SF novel).
Anyway, if we could develop something like scrith in this time and political climate, it would probably be locked down, stay top secret and would be available for military use only.
"Anyway, if we could develop something like scrith in this time and political climate, it would probably be locked down, stay top secret and would be available for military use only."
Well, that means I and my countrymen could still get it. Military use only here is pretty much WMD's. The rest requires a background investigation and a $200 tax stamp.
"(yes, feel free to downvote, peeps. after you've done the actual math, and realise people that believe in the things are applying scalar thinking to a vector problem.)"
Poppycock, one just needs to add one more type of unobtanium to the list.This one would be similar to the unobtanium required for bullet proof vests that would stop a .50 BMG round unnoticed, while weighing less than toilet tissue and breathes as if there is nothing present.
So, we need infinite rigidity, while maintaining some flexibility, with negative mass.
Yep, that describes unobtanium. Something that doesn't exist, but would make engineering easier if it did.
Can you please clarify why do you think the concept of a space elevator is such a bonkers idea?
Yes, it's clear that most people don't understand how it's supposed to work and, yes, we don't yet have the technology to build one... But, most people still don't understand how aeroplanes fly, yet it doesn't stop the airline industry from being one of the most important transportation systems in the world.
The flowing Martian water thing has been evident for over a decade. Arthur C Clarke actually used the idea in a Venus Prime story before the lineations were known. I suspect that unless the "announcement" is made soonish, they will wait until the first human landings before "discovering" that huge areas of Mars are covered in dust-mantled glaciers. Those circular karsts have to be due to something other than limestone being dissolved by ground water. Sublimating ice (methane or water) is the next best explanation. Mars is adiabatically dry and cold because of the elevated southern hemisphere and polar regions. Look for the giant alien reactor there.
Though the Hajj is going to be difficult and costly. (At least it won't be under control of our favorite rich.man wahabbi-pushers to which which we also ship several billion USD high-tech weapons at taxpayer expense because "friendship" and "reassurance against random Iran attacks." I'm not saying we should bomb, I'm just saying.)
No, wait... Mars ... Dunes... Fremen!
I have a butlerian feeling about this.
Well he is in a way for the right, much as George Carlin was a spokesman for the left. Both have/had comedic appeal. Both at times are/were taken far more seriously than they should be which less serious than they take (or took in Carlin's case) themselves.
So... what time is the invasion fleet due? Is there time for a beer or two?
FTR, I take what Rush says as about as seriously as I take any government spokesperson. Some are just funnier than others.
Don't know how long it's gonna take, but this news that there is flowing water on Mars is somehow gonna find its way into a technique to advance the leftist agenda.
Yeah, that would be that thing called "scientific research" those damn leftists are always going on about. Well spotted!
Well, next thing you know they'll find life on Mars!
And you know what the agenda behind that is. That's to convince our children that life can originate naturally from chemicals - and then develop from microbes into even thinking people by Darwinist evolution!
So it's all a plot to spread atheism!
The "fossils on Mars visible in some of the Viking/Sojourner/Curiosity pictures" crowd might have been right all along, just because the Viking probes and others didn't detect signs of complex anything could just mean the disturbed soil is similar to high oxygen bleach+ PCB etchant and destroys organics within seconds yet lower down it might be lower in perchlorates.
Had the Viking folks known about perchlorates on Mars they could have redesigned the experiment to prevent this and probably found actual life in 1976.
Unfortunately there appear to be too many idiots who give credence to this kind of crap. We could ignore him but he wouldn't go away, and anyway, what would we take the piss out of on a Friday afternoon? Idiots are there for our entertainment (we just need to make sure that they don't get into a position where they can do any damage... oh buggeration, Trump!)
Unfortunately there appear to be too many idiots who give credence to Rush's little jokes. Particularly in this thread. Well, I guess it's understandable when so many have opinions of him molded entirely by those who hate him and will say anything to do him harm. I was a listener for several years some time ago, and I assure you he's getting a big belly laugh out of the kind of hysterical reactions on display here.
Still, I suppose it doesn't really do harm if people don't know they're the object of a joke.
It may well be a joke to Limbaugh but I suspect that there are plenty of uncritical thinkers who listen to such shite and take it as gospel. I have no real knowledge of him, nor do I have a particular axe to grind, but based on this article such paranoid bullshit deserves to be called out.
Normally I find El Reg leading the pack on news items, enough so that it gets linked to by sites like Slashdot and other regular news sites. This article, however, follows hot on the heals of week-old tripe already run through the wringer by TV news outlets and talk shows.
All this sort of nonsense from Rush means is that he's entirely ignorant of science. Does he really think that the process ends at NASA saying they found something? This data will be investigated by scientists planet-wide now, to either confirm or deny it. Further exploration will be undertaken to try and confirm or deny it also.
Science doesn't just end with an announcement - it is barely the beginning of the process!
Personally, I'm a bit mild about those waters.
Or to be more accurate, how excited can one be about the contents of a single raindrop flowing down a gully. That *is* the approximate quantity being spoken of.
Still, considering how many places we find life on this planet, it's conceivable that single celled life could be present.
Inside of The Waters Of Mars.
So many comments yet not one of you appears to have even heard or read what Rush actually said, just regurgitating what the media fed you, so who are the real morons I wonder... He never said that the claim of finding running water was a hoax and didn't mention anything at all about Muslims, other than how NASA's budget was transferred to Muslim outreach by the Obama regime (a verifiable fact BTW). One can easily check the transcript on his site, or if you listen to him like I have for over 20 years catch it live. He welcomed the news, what he did state was that given the fact that the Obama regime has molded most government bodies into extensions of its political ambitions that they would use this finding to spin some sort of message to bolster their ideology and sure enough right on cue some NASA spokesperson did indeed invoke the 'climate change' mantra to explain why the potential ocean on Mars had now disappeared.
@ Kumar2012, You're wasting your time, this crowd is a lost cause. The actual thinkers who might comment intelligently won't come near this thread (present company excepted). What we have here are a lot of yapping hyenas that always run in a pack. They hear the name "Rush" and deeply ingrained neural programming comes into play. Actual cognition is supressed in favour of knee-jerk emotionalism.
And yes, I'm baiting them. I know it's wrong but somehow I just can't resist.
mars is not a planet. no one ever went to the moon, no one can, it's a light in the sky, as are all the stars. the entire world is being deceived by secondary knowledge.
there is no primary knowledge (from your own senses, experiments and repeated observations) that the earth is a ball (what's the rate of curvature for 3959 miles radius? how much should the earth dip away from you after 30 miles? what about 60 miles?)
nor is there a single shred of primary evidence that it is spinning at 1038 mph at the equator.
there are a few paintings/ computer-generate still images of earth from nasa et al, but not one real video of the real earth spinning majestically in space. why not? what's so hard about taking 25 of those images every second for an hour or so?
everything you have ever been told is a lie. now scream and shout a lot, but it wasn't me who lied to you.
if basic science was hard, there would be no viagra or headache pills, or microwaves, or any kind of working technology that can be advanced year in year out
or GPS satelites in a geosynchronous orbit, if all of that works, then the world is far older then 6000 years, carbon dating must work too
@zmodem - Viagra was invented and marketed for the treatment of heart disease, the introduction of Aspirin was suppressed by Bayer so as not to interfere with the sales of Bayer's new wonder drug Heroin. Why should I believe anything you say about these clearly incompetent scientists?
My phone tells me where I am, and I can clearly see that it uses only land based transmission systems why should GPS be any different. All carbon dating is polluted by the atom bomb tests and so cannot be relied on. All the scientific evidence you cite is untrustworthy. You have not proved your point and I have no reason to change my ideas.
(Where is the tongue-in-cheek icon ? )
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