leicsmac

That's because there's "more" at stake this year, I think. I hope the Euro players are up for it. They need to be and they need the form to match.

I'll be honest, I never thought that "peroxide blondes with no souls" was considered a type but I'm not here to judge.

Arron Banks has always been like that.

I think this a statement that requires something to back it up, tbh. It's obvious that vanity plays at least some part in these programs (one could say the entire Space Race in the 60s was a vanity project on the part of entire nations), but that doesn't mean that the research such projects bring isn't both not intuitively found by other means or not critical to the continued survival of our civilisation and biosphere.

I can't quite get my head around the idea that some people don't grasp that our name is already mud with future generations because of how shitty we're leaving the world for them already. Do we really want to go the whole hog in terms of screwing them over (like, absolutely) and muddy it even more?

Yeah, fair enough. I think we might agree that you need to devote the requisite amount of resources to both, but you do need to do both at least somewhat concurrently.

Yeah, fair point tbh. I guess it's just frustrating to see yet another local news report about yet another poor bugger who is on the verge of death (or actually passed on) because there simply aren't enough organs available. Edit: perhaps sometime soon medical science might gift us the miracle of synthetic organs and this ethical dilemma will become much more redundant.

It's a fair argument to make, and one I've heard before. I think I'll quote from a previous response I've made on this very thread: "The first (reason) is that the advancement of space tech doesn't just defend against future threats by having humans colonise other places - it also allows us, in some cases, to identify and hopefully address them before they become something we cannot stop. To use the obvious example, if there's an asteroid on its way to give us a really bad day, well, we could do with firstly knowing it's out there and coming for us at all and secondly having the tech standing by in order to sort it out rather than having to build something up from scratch with time that we don't really have. Moving away from that, we can use space tech to monitor for the possibility of supervolcanic eruptions, give projections on temperature increases caused by greenhouse gases, and other things too. It's not exactly saving the world, but it is giving us timely information that we wouldn't otherwise get, that would give us a better chance of it being saved should the need arise - and so increase the chances of long-term human survival. And we've barely scratched the surface of what such tech development might be able to do in order to defend ourselves against such threats. Additionally, to expand on the point above, there are loads of spin-off techs that have resulted from spaceflight programs that have contributed to making life easier and better here in Earth. The second (reason) does indeed play into the idea of human colonisation of the Moon or Mars or space habitats, and it also requires them to be self-sustaining, at least for a long time (a tough ask, but not impossible). If planetary disaster were to strike, those people would survive, and the Earth would not be off-limits to life forever - depending on the situation, they could one day return, they wouldn't be stuck away from Earth permanently. Of course, restoring any vestige of civilisation would take a bloody long time and might not happen at all, but at least the chance might exist, rather than if they were not there and there be no chance at all. Time, however, is something we have - barring extinction-level events that crop up every so often, Earth is likely going to remain habitable by complex for the next 500-700 million years (until the Sun's increasing luminosity starts playing too much havoc). That is about the same length of time that complex life has existed on Earth at all, and it is somewhere around 10 million human lifetimes. That's why I don't like saying something can't or won't be done - over a long enough timescale, a lot can happen. A hundred years ago the idea of any kind of flight was seen as a ludicrously dangerous enterprise left only to the bravest mavericks, after all. Who knows where we'll be in a thousand years time, let alone more than that? Provided, of course that we can defend ourselves against the threats that come our way while it all happens."

I am, which is why the option would (and should) still exist for people to opt out.

That's the most obvious reason, but then that raises the further question of why they don't want to be seen doing that. One would think that firstly they're OK with calling out poor behaviour from other wannabe (and actual) autocrats, and secondly that they know if there really is a "special relationship" going on here, it would survive - or even benefit - from some honesty.

Right thread for it then, clearly. But I'd like to hear someone explain such reasoning to the family/loved ones of someone who just died because there wasn't a transplant match avaliable to them.

Why both the Tories and Labour haven't emphasised Farage giving even a bit of credence to Trump's dangerously unscientific bollocks (that will cost lives and health) a long time before now, I have no idea.

Excerpt from the Beeb News at Six last night. SOPHIE RAWORTH: Let’s start with London wants to go to Sharia law. NICK BEAKE, BBC VERIFY: Yeah, that’s right Sophie, this was the startling claim made by President Trump today, part of his message that immigration is destroying European countries, including the UK. We know that for the best part of a decade, Trump has attacked Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. But this appears to be the first time the president has claimed that London wants to go to Sharia law. There was this myth on the internet about five years ago that was quickly and easily debunked that the legal system would be moving to Sharia Law. So that was then. Today, the mayor of London’s office said that these comments didn’t really dignify a response. They called them appalling and bigoted. And a government minister said for the record that Trump’s claim was false. SOPHIE RAWORTH: What about climate change? The president said it was the greatest con job ever. NICK BEAKE, BBC VERIFY: Yeah, he did, Sophie. The thing is that decades of specialist research really torpedoes that argument. The vast majority of scientists and experts say that climate change caused by humans is real. And here’s a quote. This is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, made up of hundreds of leading scientists. “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gasses, have unequivocally caused global warming.” SOPHIE RAWORTH: And finally, he also said, he told world leaders that he has ended seven wars. Has he? NICK BEAKE, BBC VERIFY: No he hasn’t, Sophie, that is not the case. Trump claimed that thousands of people were dying in each of these seven wars he talked about, but the reality is very different. Some of them were very quick skirmishes across borders. There was one that was a dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over water, over the construction of a dam on the River Nile. There was no fighting there. President Trump says he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but the war in Gaza continues, as, too, the war in Ukraine, which of course Mr. Trump said he could end in just one day. Sometimes, it's good to see the most obvious lies being pointed out in no uncertain terms on primetime TV for all to see.

Just goes to show what scientific progress can achieve.

Fvck me, well that would be bleak.

Nah, I'm pretty sure that there will be at least some, but if we give them a future that resembles the Fury Road then we at least owe them an apology and explanation before whoever is Immortan Joe either enslaves them or uses their body fat for machine oil.

And when the payment for that lack of desire comes due, it will be very, very high. Hopefully though, there is still time to avert a future where we must beg for forgiveness from future generations or live forever in their infamy.

Decent people identifying a clear, legit and obvious threat to the future, only to be stymied by those who prefer a comfortable status quo (for them) and be told they're overreacting (or flat out lying) and ignore that threat until it's practically too late to stop? That sounds familiar.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy7pegvz17yo Nasa has said it hopes to send astronauts on a ten-day trip around the Moon as soon as February. The US space agency had previously committed to launching no later than the end of April but said it aims to bring the mission forward. It's been 50 years since any country has flown a crewed lunar mission. Nasa will send four astronauts there and back to test systems. The Artemis II mission is the second launch of the Artemis programme, whose aim is to land astronauts and eventually establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface. Finally, some good news.

It's never been a uniquely right wing position, no. That being said, like the discussion above I think such terminology, on this topic anyway, is obsolete. You're either in favour of using scientific advancement to guarantee the future or you aren't and you value your own present over all of that future. That goes beyond political compassing IMO.

And, lest we forget, getting that one wrong renders practically all other policy positions null and void.

On the topic of organ donation, not only should opt-out rather than opt-in be the default, but opt-out should only be permitted for agreed extremely good cause. There's far too many people that suffer and die needlessly (bolded for emphasis) because they cannot find a matching donor in time.

Assuming Robinson is still carrying an injury? Going to need Wood and Archer to be utterly magnificent. And Carse and Stokes to do a lot of the lifting too. Batting does look strongish though.

IMO The Beeb is to news reportage like Churchill said of democracy - "the worst form of (news outlet), other than all the others that have been tried". Additionally, having a news outlet not directly subjected to commercial pressure and therefore not subject to editorial slant from that source is critical, I think.

It does come back to money. Oil and gas companies have it, they want to keep it (two of the key tenets of conservatism right there), and so they value the status quo over a future where they might not get as big a slice of the pie. The vast majority of arguments I've heard (and I've heard practically all of them) against change come down, fundamentally, to not wanting short term cost and losing market control. There are no legit scientific arguments, and the environmental ones are mostly strawmen regarding birds and wind turbines or cobalt/lithium mining that they really wouldn't care about without the above economic concerns to add. The science denial is mostly just an adjutant to that belief, but a rather important one given that the policy decisions taken in its name may, one day soon, doom us all.