Sunday, December 6, 2015

Bob Zubrin: Why we should be going to Mars

Link to Reddit comments

3 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

After that last bit part of his answer, I expected an applause attempt by somebody, but none came. Sad.

ricpic said...

Read Zubrin's lips: "The dose of cosmic rays is moderate."

Chip Ahoy said...

The hardest part of Rapture is where the tempo picks up for nonsensical rap.

Everything is going along fine until:

"And then you're in the man from Mars
You go out at night, eatin' cars"

Fine. Nonsense is fine. But then to hit it, and I mean hit then you must rapidly establish four parked cars and fingerspell the following as fast as the words can be spoken and be clear about it, that is, no blur allowed and there are four distinct cars.
"You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too Mercuries and Subarus"
You pull out of that dreadful fingerspelling pitstop.
"And you don't stop, you keep on eatin' cars"
And hit the word "stop" with a karate chop to the opposite palm followed by recognizable "continue" and "gobbling up" cars as if returning from disruption to comfortable pace, recognizable signs and satisfying melody.

You're talking about Mars. We don't have to go to Mars. The guy pulled something random out of his butt about Mars and talked about it. I can do that too. Say I'm bizarre. You are first.

That's not the hardest part about Rapture. The fake French part is. The only solution is resolve bullshit fake sign to capture the feel of it and possibly explain that you did that. Problem is, nobody can agree what the fake French is and which portions switch to English.

a) Francois sez fas, Flashe' no do
b) Francois sais pas, Flashe no deux
c) François c'est, pas flashe non due

What do you do with that? Be silly as they, I suppose.

See, you got your "pas de deux" Dance for two in French, Toni told me that, she dragged me to ballet a couple of times. Actually, "step of two" or "two step" but we daren't be so prosaic as that with Toni. She gets miffed and there's no recovering the evening.

And we see Pas and deux divided between Francois and Flashe, were this a crossword this would be a cinch, so I will go with signs for "dance" and "two" and Francois will just have to be "France" and "Flashe" will just have to be a snap, and then divide "dance" and "two" between them and just let it hang there with fidelity to lyrics but without making any real sense just as the song itself does not make sense.

I don't like the sign for "fast" so I never use it.

How's that for being stubborn?

It starts out with a gun shape L and snaps upward to "flick a marble" position. It's a weird and unnatural sign.

So I don't use that. Flash must be different from textbook "fast" because I don't like that word.

I think a snap is better. But it is technically illegal.

Sadly, there is no sign for "Mars" that will be recognized amongst regular people so none that you can use in your chance encounters or conversations with friends, relatives, coworkers, and neighbors.

You can join an elite group of signing linguists with specialized knowledge of STEM vocabulary that will be recognized among deaf astrophysicists. But you cannot use it anywhere else or that would be useless and silly. Want to see it? Okay, here goes. The man is defining it by motions, "4th body around the sun."

Try it and your deaf friends will go, "Wut?" and you'll go, "fourth planet around the sun, Mars." And they'll all smile and nod knowingly and agreeably while thinking, "smartass."