Talk-Polywell.org

Sounds like it could have an input on supersymmetry and dark matter...

So how long do you think it'll take to commercially manufacture supermatter?

kunkmiester wrote:So how long do you think it'll take to commercially manufacture supermatter?

you're assuming it's stable.

Well, It seems one of them is, for what little good it is. I'd imagine they'll find something that's useful, and then we'll want to mass manufacture it.

the fabled "scrith", from Ringworld? (not sure you guys read sci fi_

Sure do! Why do you think I became a propeller head?

Edit: Forgive the drift... It's one of the reasons an objection I have to "Avatar" was the incorrect name of "unobtainium." The traditional name for the natural anti-gravity material is "Cavorite" from H. G. Wells' "The First Men in the Moon."

James Cameron, if you're gonna borrow science-fiction's old ideas, have the grace to use the traditional names! Really!

"unobtanium" has been used a lot colloquially as well... so I'm not too bothered by it...

I should add that, for instance, I've seen many, many discussions about how "unobtainium" is needed in order to build this or that kind of device or craft.

I first consciously remember running across it in an article on the X-30/NASP back in the early 1990s, but I'm sure it was used before then.

Of course, the bad guys in Avatar are suspiciously Western, while the good guys are suspiciously like noble savage insurgents, representing a certain idealistic interpretation of the past set into a future sci-fi scenario. But I guess we don't really need a ten page thread on whether Avatar is a piece of anti-Western/anti-American propaganda...

CaptainBeowulf wrote:I should add that, for instance, I've seen many, many discussions about how "unobtainium" is needed in order to build this or that kind of device or craft.

I first consciously remember running across it in an article on the X-30/NASP back in the early 1990s, but I'm sure it was used before then.

Of course, the bad guys in Avatar are suspiciously Western, while the good guys are suspiciously like noble savage insurgents, representing a certain idealistic interpretation of the past set into a future sci-fi scenario. But I guess we don't really need a ten page thread on whether Avatar is a piece of anti-Western/anti-American propaganda...

Avatar is an OLD story transported to the future. Isnt much different from Pocahontas for instance.

Anyway, anti-western? Maybe. But notice that in all these stories, the noble savages are SAVED by the hero, who is a... yes... a western person.

Avatar was a horrible movie.
It was in many ways derivative. The most interesting aspects were the visual effects and the stereoscopy. The stereoscopy also was in no way new. What was new was the techniques for having a live preview of CG scenes that James Cameron used in the previz department. That was pretty cool. This too was more a refinement of existing techniques though.
Anyway the story was horribly stupid and a typical leftist hippie kind of bullcrap. The "blue hippie cats" doing yoga and pilates...
"Unobtainium" has been used in engineering circles for many years. I dont know who started it, but I too remember reading it on space related boards a decade or even longer ago whenever a discussion about RLVs got stuck on technical details like heatshields or structural weight savings
In that sense this was probably meant as a tongue in cheek insider joke for those among us that remember these discussions.

AcesHigh wrote:

CaptainBeowulf wrote:I should add that, for instance, I've seen many, many discussions about how "unobtainium" is needed in order to build this or that kind of device or craft.

I first consciously remember running across it in an article on the X-30/NASP back in the early 1990s, but I'm sure it was used before then.

Of course, the bad guys in Avatar are suspiciously Western, while the good guys are suspiciously like noble savage insurgents, representing a certain idealistic interpretation of the past set into a future sci-fi scenario. But I guess we don't really need a ten page thread on whether Avatar is a piece of anti-Western/anti-American propaganda...

Avatar is an OLD story transported to the future. Isnt much different from Pocahontas for instance.

Anyway, anti-western? Maybe. But notice that in all these stories, the noble savages are SAVED by the hero, who is a... yes... a western person.

Also Kurzweil slammed the movie, on the assumption that the movie was anti-technology. Which is a wrong assumption.. I'm not sure how a big shot like Kurzweil could get it so wrong.

Also Kurzweil slammed the movie, on the assumption that the movie was anti-technology. Which is a wrong assumption.. I'm not sure how a big shot like Kurzweil could get it so wrong.

Really, you think he got it wrong? I had the very same impression. The blue hippie cats won the fight against the technological humans that were destroying their environment with their technology.

Btw, I am not a big fan of Kurzweil, but he seems to be right with this...

Yep. I think he's wrong because in the movie there's no inherent association between the antagonist "evil" baby killer corporation/mercenary force, and anti-technology ideology/doctrine. The driving purpose of "the corporation" is profit. That their target is an untechnological group (although you have arguably hints of post-technological civilization like the planet-wide information network: the "plant-based" brain-network interface) is coincidence.

AcesHigh wrote:Anyway, anti-western? Maybe. But notice that in all these stories, the noble savages are SAVED by the hero, who is a... yes... a western person.

A hero who "goes native," and rejects the ways of civilization in favor of the "truer, closer to nature" ways of the savages.

Seeing as the Na'vi and their Gaia-Goddess are standing in the way of human survival, my immediate reaction in the theatre was for the humans to blast Pandora with the antimatter drive on their starship. Mine the unobtanium off the dead rock formerly known as "Pandora."

The movie was an Ode to the Myth of the Noble Savage. Booooorrinnnnng.

Betruger wrote:Also Kurzweil slammed the movie, on the assumption that the movie was anti-technology. Which is a wrong assumption.. I'm not sure how a big shot like Kurzweil could get it so wrong.

He didn't get it wrong. "Avatar" is militantly anti-technology. The "healthy, balanced" lives of the savages are proven to be superior to the ways of civilization via trial by combat.