Posts by Martin Budden

Re: Makes me feel quite guilty

Then you are doing it wrong: I spend more than 10 quid a week on beer :-)

Re: I ain't no cosmologist...

title text

Re: Secret developments?

Presumably they need to be refuelled with a barley & hops mixture before reuse?

Re: "no UK Government ever spends any money west of Bristol"

I'm not sure whether Newquay is viable, either.

For a spaceport, or just in general?

No, there was an awful made-up load of claptrap called "The Dish" about a completely different facility hundreds of kilometres away in Parkes which *didn't* relay the first images of the first moon landing.

Re: How they going to fund it?

If the ruble is down the toilet it's got plenty of liquidity.

Re: Not ALL 12 step programs

@ Anonymous Coward your post contains so much fail it is hard to know where to start... at the beginning I suppose.

Getting off drugs and alcohol is easy to do by yourself. Go to jail and dry out.

Your suggestion that people should intentionally acquire a criminal record in order to go cold turkey on drugs or alcohol is highly irresponsible: a criminal record is in itself going to cause further problems which will only make life harder, thereby increasing the chances of falling off the wagon. Then of course there is the added problem that drugs and alcohol are available in many jails, which means being in jail does not force a person to dry out.

If you don't have a belief structure then you really have no right to criticize those who do. Your criticism is nothing less than hate speech.

skeptical i did not criticise having a belief structure: the criticism was that science and fact should not be overruled by a belief structure. That is not an unreasonable opinion to hold and it is certainly not hate speech.

Not that I've tried it but there are drugs like Ayahuasca that do something simliar to Oxytocin (Block bonding sites)

Does Ayahuasca block bonding sites? Yes. Are those bonding sites similar to the GABA receptors blocked by oxytocin? No, Ayahuasca does completely different things so your mention of it is irrelevant.

Re: You could duplicate it ...

The real challenge is self a self describing code.....

Forget the DNA stuff, this would be a valuable thought exercise in its own right, something Randall Munroe would probably enjoy.

Re: The Higgs Boson has been found!

(This joke is best viewed in a Liverpudlian accent)

Q. What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? A. You can't wash your hands in a buffalo.

You go and tell Buzz Aldrin that he is among "the worst of the species", I dare you. Then after your face has stopped bleeding you can have a think about what sort of people get picked to go on very expensive and dangerous space missions.

Re: 0.8AU or 0.8 Light Years?

Last story of the day before I headed out for an interview.

When someone asks you "Pint of the usual then?" that's not an interview, it's a pub.

Re: In space, no one can hear you say "cut"

If the colony is actually self-sustaining then presumably they won't be eligible for Darwin awards due to the possibility of a continuing line of descendants.

That's a very big if, natch.