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OT - Another "can't be done" - Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
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2019-07-31 03:35:00 UTC
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Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)

George Dvorsky
Today 10:05amFiled to: MARS

The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting
colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this
lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not
intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live
on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh
Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to
humans.

Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system,
and that’s not saying much.

The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times
thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars
is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to
protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is
very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You
might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe
form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and
body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that
heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars
is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures
dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the
coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in
Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once
temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t
properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in
within about five to seven minutes.

The notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense.
Mars also has less mass than is typically appreciated. Gravity on the
Red Planet is 0.375 that of Earth’s, which means a 180-pound person on
Earth would weigh a scant 68 pounds on Mars. While that might sound
appealing, this low-gravity environment would likely wreak havoc to
human health in the long term, and possibly have negative impacts on
human fertility.

Yet despite these and a plethora of other issues, there’s this popular
idea floating around that we’ll soon be able to set up colonies on Mars
with ease. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is projecting colonies on Mars as early
as the 2050s, while astrobiologist Lewis Darnell, a professor at the
University of Westminster, has offered a more modest estimate, saying
it’ll be about 50 to 100 years before “substantial numbers of people
have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns.” The United Arab
Emirates is aiming to build a Martian city of 600,000 occupants by 2117,
in one of the more ambitious visions of the future.

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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Soviet artist Andrei Sokolov (mid-1960s)
Sadly, this is literally science fiction. While there’s no doubt in my
mind that humans will eventually visit Mars and even build a base or
two, the notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense, and an unmitigated denial of the
tremendous challenges posed by such a prospect.

Pioneering astronautics engineer Louis Friedman, co-founder of the
Planetary Society and author of Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the
Stars, likens this unfounded enthusiasm to the unfulfilled visions
proposed during the 1940s and 1950s.

“Back then, cover stories of magazines like Popular Mechanics and
Popular Science showed colonies under the oceans and in the Antarctic,”
Friedman told Gizmodo. The feeling was that humans would find a way to
occupy every nook and cranny of the planet, no matter how challenging or
inhospitable, he said. “But this just hasn’t happened. We make
occasional visits to Antarctica and we even have some bases there, but
that’s about it. Under the oceans it’s even worse, with some limited
human operations, but in reality it’s really very, very little.” As for
human colonies in either of these environments, not so much. In fact,
not at all, despite the relative ease at which we could achieve this.

After the Moon landings, Friedman said he and his colleagues were hugely
optimistic about the future, believing “we would do more and more
things, such as place colonies on Mars and the Moon,” but the “fact is,
no human spaceflight program, whether Apollo, the Space Shuttle Program,
or the International Space Station,” has established the necessary
groundwork for setting up colonies on Mars, such as building the
required infrastructure, finding safe and viable ways of sourcing food
and water, mitigating the deleterious effects of radiation and low
gravity, among other issues. Unlike other fields, development into human
spaceflight, he said, “has become static.” Friedman agreed that we’ll
likely build bases on Mars, but the “evidence of history” suggests
colonization is unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Neuroscientist Rachael Seidler from the University of Florida says many
people today fail to appreciate how difficult it’ll be to sustain
colonies on the Red Planet.

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“That’s thousands of years in the making at least.”
“People like to be optimistic about the idea of colonizing Mars,”
Seidler, a specialist in motor learning and the effects of microgravity
on astronauts, told Gizmodo. “But it also sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky,”
she said. “A lot of people approach it as thinking we shouldn’t limit
ourselves based on practicalities, but I agree, there are a lot of
potential negative physiological consequences.”

Seidler said NASA and other space agencies are currently working very
hard to create and test countermeasures for the various negative impacts
of living on Mars. For example, astronauts on the ISS, who are subject
to tremendous muscle and bone loss, try to counteract the effects by
doing strength and aerobic training while up in space. As for treating
the resulting negative health impacts, whether caused by long-duration
stays on the ISS or from long-term living in the low-gravity environment
of Mars, “we’re not there yet,” said Seidler.

In his latest book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, cosmologist
and astrophysicist Martin Rees addressed the issue of colonizing Mars
rather succinctly:

By 2100 thrill seekers... may have established ‘bases’ independent from
the Earth—on Mars, or maybe on asteroids. Elon Musk (born in 1971) of
SpaceX says he wants to die on Mars—but not on impact. But don’t ever
expect mass emigration from Earth. And here I disagree strongly with
Musk and with my late Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, who enthuse
about rapid build-up of large-scale Martian communities. It’s a
dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s
problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate
change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming
Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement
as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no ‘Planet B’ for
ordinary risk-averse people.

Indeed, there’s the whole terraforming issue to consider. By
terraforming, scientists are referring to the hypothetical prospect of
geoengineering a planet to make it habitable for humans and other life.
For Mars, that would mean the injection of oxygen and other gases into
the atmosphere to raise surface temperature and air pressure, among
other interventions. A common argument in favor of colonizing Mars is
that it’ll allow us to begin the process of transforming the planet to a
habitable state. This scenario has been tackled by a number of science
fiction authors, including Kim Stanley Robinson in his acclaimed Mars
Trilogy. But as Friedman told Gizmodo, “that’s thousands of years in the
making at least.”

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Briony Horgan, assistant professor of planetary science at Purdue
University, said Martian terraforming is a pipedream, a prospect that’s
“way beyond any kind of technology we’re going to have any time soon,”
she told Gizmodo.

Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Screenshot: Still from Total Recall (1990)
When it comes to terraforming Mars, there’s also the logistics to
consider, and the materials available to the geoengineers who would dare
to embark upon such a multi-generational project. In their 2018 Nature
paper, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards from the University of
Colorado, Boulder sought to understand how much carbon dioxide would be
needed to increase the air pressure on Mars to the point where humans
could work on the surface without having to wear pressure suits, and to
increase temperature such that liquid water could exist and persist on
the surface. Jakosky and Edwards concluded that there’s not nearly
enough CO2 on Mars required for terraforming, and that future
geoengineers would have to somehow import the required gases to do so.

To be clear, terraforming is not necessarily an impossibility, but the
timeframes and technologies required preclude the possibility of
sustaining large, vibrant colonies on Mars for the foreseeable future.

Until such time, an un-terraformed Mars will present a hostile setting
for venturing pioneers. First and foremost there’s the intense radiation
to deal with, which will confront the colonists with a constant health
burden.

Horgan said there are many big challenges to colonizing Mars, with
radiation exposure being one of them. This is an “issue that a lot of
folks, including those at SpaceX, aren’t thinking about too clearly,”
she told Gizmodo. Living underground or in shielded bases may be an
option, she said, but we have to expect that cancer rates will still be
“an order of magnitude greater” given the added exposure over time.

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“You can only do so much with radiation protection,” Horgan said. “We
could quantify the risks for about a year, but not over the super long
term. The problem is that you can’t stay in there [i.e. underground or
in bases] forever. As soon as you go outside to do anything, you’re in
trouble,” she said.

Horgan pointed to a recent Nature study showing that radiation on Mars
is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term
solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.” Depending
on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns,
radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Friedman agrees that, in principle, we could create artificial
environments on Mars, whether by building domes or underground
dwellings. The radiation problem may be solvable, he said, “but the
problems are still huge, and in a sense anti-human.”

Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live
in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly protected surface
stations with severely minimized access to the outdoors. Life in this
closed environment, with limited access to the surface, could result in
other health issues related to exclusive indoor living, such as
depression, boredom from lack of stimulus, an inability to concentrate,
poor eyesight, and high blood pressure—not to mention a complete
disconnect from nature. And like the International Space Station,
Martian habitats will likely be a microbial desert, hosting only a tiny
sample of the bacteria needed to maintain a healthy human microbiome.

Another issue has to do with motivation. As Friedman pointed out
earlier, we don’t see colonists living in Antarctica or under the sea,
so why should we expect troves of people to want to live in a place
that’s considerably more unpleasant? It seems a poor alternative to
living on Earth, and certainly a major step down in terms of quality of
life. A strong case could even be made that, for prospective families
hoping to spawn future generations of Martian colonists, it’s borderline
cruelty.

And that’s assuming humans could even reproduce on Mars, which is an
open question. Casting aside the deleterious effects of radiation on the
developing fetus, there’s the issue of conception to consider in the
context of living in a minimal gravity environment. We don’t know how
sperm and egg will act on Mars, or how the first critical stages of
conception will occur. And most of all, we don’t know how low gravity
will affect the mother and fetus.

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Seidler, an expert in human physiology and kinesiology, said the issue
of human gestation on Mars is a troublesome unknown. The developing
fetus, she said, is likely to sit higher up in the womb owing to the
lower gravity, which will press upon the mother’s diaphragm, making it
hard for the mother to breathe. The low gravity may also “confuse” the
gestational process, delaying or interfering with critical phases of the
fetus’ development, such as the fetus dropping by week 39. On Earth,
bones, muscles, the circulatory system, and other aspects of human
physiology develop by working against gravity. It’s possible that the
human body might adapt to the low-gravity situation on Mars, but we
simply don’t know. An artificial womb might be a possible solution, but
again, that’s not something we’ll have access to anytime soon, nor does
it solve the low-gravity issue as it pertains to fetal development
(unless the artificial womb is placed in a centrifuge to simulate gravity).

A strong case can be made that any attempt to procreate on Mars should
be forbidden until more is known. Enforcing such a policy on a planet
that’s 34 million miles away at its closest is another question
entirely, though one would hope that Martian societies won’t regress to
lawlessness and a complete disregard of public safety and established
ethical standards.

For other colonists, the minimal gravity on Mars could result in serious
health problems over the long term. Studies of astronauts who have
participated in long-duration missions lasting about a year exhibit
troubling symptoms, including bone and muscle loss, cardiovascular
problems, immune and metabolic disorders, visual disorders, balance and
sensorimotor problems, among many other health issues. These problems
may not be as acute as those experienced on Mars, but again, we simply
don’t know. Perhaps after five or 10 or 20 years of constant exposure to
low gravity, similar gravity-related disorders will set in.

Seidler’s research into the effects of microgravity suggests it’s a
distinct possibility.

“Yes, there would be physiological and neural changes that would occur
on Mars due to its partial-gravity environment,” she told Gizmodo. “It’s
not clear whether these changes would plateau at some point. My work has
shown an upward shift of the brain within the skull in microgravity,
some regions of gray matter increases and others that decrease,
structural changes within the brain’s white matter, and fluid shifts
towards the top of the head.”

Seidler said some of these changes scale with the duration of
microgravity exposure, from two weeks up to six months, but she hasn’t
looked beyond that.

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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Cover of Martian Time Slip by Philip K. Dick. (1964,
Ballantine Books)
“Some of these effects would have to eventually plateau—there is a
structural limit on the fluid volume that the skull can contain, for
example,” she said. “And, the nervous system is very adaptable. It can
‘learn’ how to control movements in microgravity despite the altered
sensory inputs. But again, it’s unclear what the upper limits are.”

The effects of living in partial gravity compared to microgravity may
not be as severe, she said, but in either case, different sensory inputs
are going into the brain, as they’re not loaded by weight in the way
they’re used to. This can result in a poor sense of balance and
compromised motor functions, but research suggests astronauts in
microgravity eventually adapt.

“There are a lot of questions still unanswered about how microgravity
and partial gravity will affect human physiology,” Seidler told Gizmodo.
“We don’t yet understand the safety or health implications. More needs
to be done.”

Astronauts who return from long-duration missions have a rough go for
the first few days back on Earth, experiencing nausea, dizziness, and
weakness. Some astronauts, like NASA’s Scott Kelly, never feel like
their old selves again, including declines in cognitive test scores and
altered gene function. Work by NASA’s Scott Wood has shown that recovery
time for astronauts is proportionate to the length of the mission—the
longer the mission, the longer the recovery. Disturbingly, we have no
data for microgravity exposure beyond a year or so, and it’s an open
question as to the effects of low gravity on the human body after years,
or even decades, of exposure.

With this in mind, it’s an open question as to how Martian colonists
might fare upon a return visit to Earth. It might actually be a brutal
experience, especially after having experienced years in a partial
gravity environment. Children born on Mars (if that’s even a
possibility) might never be able to visit the planet where their species
originated.

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And these are the health issues we think might be a problem. A host of
other problems are likely to exist, giving rise to Martian-specific
diseases affecting our brains, bodies, and emotional well-being. The
human lifespan on Mars is likely to be significantly less than it is on
Earth, though again, we simply don’t know.

Finally, there’s the day-to-day survival to consider. Limited access to
fundamental resources, like food and water, could place further
constraints on a colony’s ability to grow and thrive.

“Establishing stable resources to live off for a long period of time is
possible, but it’ll be tough,” said Horgan. “We’ll want to be close to
water and water ice, but for that we’ll have to go pretty far north. But
the further north you go, the rougher the conditions get on the surface.
The winters are cold, and there’s less sunlight.”


Illustration: NASA
Colonists will also need stable food sources, and figure out a way to
keep plants away from radiation. The regolith, or soil, on Mars is
toxic, containing dangerous perchlorate chemicals, so that also needs to
be avoided. To grow crops, colonists will likely build subterranean
hydroponic greenhouses. This will require specialized lighting,
genetically modified plants designed specifically for Mars, and plenty
of water, the latter of which will be difficult to source on Mars.

“People don’t realize how complicated this is,” said Horgan. “Trying to
think about establishing colonies to point of what we would consider
safe will be a big challenge.”

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Technological solutions to these problems may exist, as are medical
interventions to treat Martian-specific diseases. But again, nothing
that we could possibly develop soon. And even if we do develop therapies
to treat humans living on Mars, these interventions are likely to be
limited in scope, with patients requiring constant care and attention.

As Martin Rees pointed out, Mars and other space environments are
“inherently hostile for humans,” but as he wrote in his book,

[We] (and our progeny here on Earth) should cheer on the brave space
adventurers, because they will have a pivotal role in spearheading the
post-human future and determining what happens in the twenty-second
century and beyond.

By post-human future, Rees is referring to a hypothetical future era in
which humans have undergone extensive biological and cybernetic
modifications such that they can no longer be classified as human. So
while Mars will remain inaccessible to ordinary, run-of-the-mill Homo
sapiens, the Red Planet could become available to those who dare to
modify themselves and their progeny.

A possible solution is to radically modify human biology to make Martian
colonists specially adapted to live, work, and procreate on the Red
Planet. As Rees wrote in On the Future:

So, because they will be ill-adapted to their new habitat, the pioneer
explorers will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on
Earth to redesign themselves. They’ll harness the super-powerful genetic
and cyborg technologies that will be developed in coming decades. These
techniques will be, one hopes, heavily regulated on Earth, on prudential
and ethical grounds, but ‘settlers’ on Mars will be far beyond the
clutches of the regulators. We should wish them good luck in modifying
their progeny to adapt to alien environments. This might be the first
step towards divergence into a new species. Genetic modification would
be supplemented by cyborg technology—indeed there may be a transition to
fully inorganic intelligences. So, it’s these space-faring adventurers,
not those of us comfortably adapted to life on Earth, who will spearhead
the posthuman era.

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Indeed, modifying humans to make them adaptable to living on Mars will
require dramatic changes.

Article preview thumbnail
Your Children Won't Be Able To Live In Space, Without A Major Upgrade
We all dream of journeying (or living) among the stars. But space is a
spectacularly awful place…

Read on io9.​gizmodo.​com
Our DNA would have to be tailored specifically to enable a long, healthy
life on Mars, including genetic tweaks for good muscle, bone, and brain
health. These traits could be made heritable, such that Martian
colonists could pass down the characteristics to their offspring. In
cases where biology is not up for the task, scientists could use
cybernetic enhancements, including artificial neurons or synthetic skin
capable of fending off dangerous UV rays. Nanotechnology in the form of
molecular machines could deliver medicines, perform repair work, and
eliminate the need for breathing and eating. Collectively, these changes
would result in an entirely new species of human—one built specifically
for Mars.

Synthetic biologist and geneticist Craig Venter believes this is a
distinct possibility—and a tantalizing prospect. While delivering a
keynote address at a NASA event in 2010, Venter said, “Not too many
things excite my imagination as trying to design organisms—even
people—for long-term space flight, and perhaps colonization of other
worlds.”

Like some of the other solutions proposed, this won’t happen any time
soon, nor will it be easy. And it may not even happen. Which brings a
rather discouraging prospect to mind: We may be stuck on Earth.

“Not too many things excite my imagination as trying to design
organisms—even people—for long term space flight, and perhaps
colonization of other worlds.”
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As Friedman pointed out, this carries some rather heavy existential and
philosophical implications. If humans can’t make it to Mars, it means
we’re destined to be “a single-planet species,” he said. What’s more, it
suggests extraterrestrial civilizations might be in the same boat, and
that the potential for “intelligent life to spread throughout the
universe is very, very gloomy,” he told Gizmodo.

“If we can’t make it to a nearby planet with an atmosphere, water, and a
stable surface—which in principle suggests we could do it—then certainly
we’re not going to make it much beyond that,” said Friedman. “But if
we’re doomed to be a single-planet species, then we need to recognize
both psychologically and technologically that we’re going to have live
within the limits of Earth.”

Which is a good point. That we may eventually become an interplanetary
or interstellar species remains an open question. We must work to make
this futuristic prospect a reality, but until then, we have to make sure
that Earth—the only habitable planet we know of—remains that way.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George Dvorsky
George is a senior staff reporter at Gizmodo.

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George Dvorsky
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 11:46am
One thing I didn’t mention in this piece is how, after Mars, the list of
other viable places to set up colonies falls off sharply. Realistically,
we only have the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to consider, which present
their own challenges, including the tremendous amount of radiation
pouring out from the gas giants.

69
Reply17 replies

Nimo
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 12:32pm
Why not the skies of Venus? Sure, there’s zero land so everything would
have to be built, but above 65 km from the surface, the pressure and
temperature is almost the same as Earth. On top of that, because of how
thick the atmosphere CO2 is, you could literally just fill balloons with
oxygen and float!

27
Reply7 replies

arnastu
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:20pm
I think you could also have looked more at the microbiology of
sequestration. We wouldn’t be going to Mars alone - we would also be
taking along our gut, oral, and skin flora, and whatever viruses
happened to be present in the astronauts. That flora is necessary to our
survival. We tend to kind of take the regulation of our digestive tracts
for granted, but our gut tube isn’t a simple machine that absorbs
nutrients. It works properly only with an elaborately interdependent
population of bacteria. We are obligate symbiotes. Our best treatment so
far for gut microbiota dysregulation is a fecal transplant. Give you
someone else’s healthy bacterial zoo, cause we don’t know how to achieve
that by less 14th-century methods. If any one type of bacteria gets out
of order, we rely on the rest of them to condition and out-compete the
miscreants. We don’t want to kill them - that wouldn’t be good either -
we just want them to exist in overall harmony, achieved by means we
don’t even understand. Here on earth that flora is informed by
interaction with the whole rest of the world, and it in turn educates
our immune systems. On Mars, with no niches occupied by anything else
and everything subject to radiation and various other unnatural
influences, you’d have perfectly ordinary bacteria turning pathogenic,
immune systems going wack, viruses that hadn’t even been characterized
taking on new roles.

The idea of human bodies as stand-alone machines that you can fuel up
with water, air, fats, carbs, essential amino acids and expect them to
tick along, amputed from the rest of life, is a profound
misunderstanding of what life is.

28
Reply2 replies

Citizen-Snips
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:25pm
Great piece George, as usual. The other thing you don’t mention about
the viability of Mars colonies is that there is no economic incentive to
go there. While of course economic incentives don’t motivate everything
we do, the complete lack of economic incentives of living on Mars makes
the prospect of long term habitation extremely unlikely, even if it were
possible.

As you pointed out, Antarctica is much much more hospitable to human
habitation than Mars, yet outside of a few isolated science stations no
one lives there. Why? Because there is no money to be made. People may
climb Mt. Everest or go to the Moon “because it is there,” but they
don’t stay unless there is an economic reason to do so.

26
Reply8 replies

John McPolymath
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:42pm
With all due respect, George, I don’t believe you have taken human
ingenuity into account. Mars could be transformed into a planet with a
livable surface within a century—possibly much sooner.

It seems to me that you are being excessively and unreasonably negative,
playing Devil’s advocate, when many potential and actual solutions exist
to address the issues which you have presented. I can offer you a
solution to many of those myself.

The truly important question is whether humanity will ever develop
enough interest in leaving Earth in order to spread and to protect the
only known lifeforms in the Universe from the disaster which will
inevitably destroy all life on Earth.

...Also for abundant and unlimited resources, an impossibly huge amount
of living space, the sheer joy of exploration and discovery, and
entertainment.

But the life thing—that’s pretty important too.



SPACE
Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)

George Dvorsky
Today 10:05amFiled to: MARS
146.0K
737
8
The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting
colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this
lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not
intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live
on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh
Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to
humans.

Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system,
and that’s not saying much.

The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times
thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars
is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to
protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is
very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You
might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe
form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and
body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that
heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars
is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures
dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the
coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in
Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once
temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t
properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in
within about five to seven minutes.

The notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense.
Mars also has less mass than is typically appreciated. Gravity on the
Red Planet is 0.375 that of Earth’s, which means a 180-pound person on
Earth would weigh a scant 68 pounds on Mars. While that might sound
appealing, this low-gravity environment would likely wreak havoc to
human health in the long term, and possibly have negative impacts on
human fertility.

Yet despite these and a plethora of other issues, there’s this popular
idea floating around that we’ll soon be able to set up colonies on Mars
with ease. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is projecting colonies on Mars as early
as the 2050s, while astrobiologist Lewis Darnell, a professor at the
University of Westminster, has offered a more modest estimate, saying
it’ll be about 50 to 100 years before “substantial numbers of people
have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns.” The United Arab
Emirates is aiming to build a Martian city of 600,000 occupants by 2117,
in one of the more ambitious visions of the future.

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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Soviet artist Andrei Sokolov (mid-1960s)
Sadly, this is literally science fiction. While there’s no doubt in my
mind that humans will eventually visit Mars and even build a base or
two, the notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense, and an unmitigated denial of the
tremendous challenges posed by such a prospect.

Pioneering astronautics engineer Louis Friedman, co-founder of the
Planetary Society and author of Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the
Stars, likens this unfounded enthusiasm to the unfulfilled visions
proposed during the 1940s and 1950s.

“Back then, cover stories of magazines like Popular Mechanics and
Popular Science showed colonies under the oceans and in the Antarctic,”
Friedman told Gizmodo. The feeling was that humans would find a way to
occupy every nook and cranny of the planet, no matter how challenging or
inhospitable, he said. “But this just hasn’t happened. We make
occasional visits to Antarctica and we even have some bases there, but
that’s about it. Under the oceans it’s even worse, with some limited
human operations, but in reality it’s really very, very little.” As for
human colonies in either of these environments, not so much. In fact,
not at all, despite the relative ease at which we could achieve this.

After the Moon landings, Friedman said he and his colleagues were hugely
optimistic about the future, believing “we would do more and more
things, such as place colonies on Mars and the Moon,” but the “fact is,
no human spaceflight program, whether Apollo, the Space Shuttle Program,
or the International Space Station,” has established the necessary
groundwork for setting up colonies on Mars, such as building the
required infrastructure, finding safe and viable ways of sourcing food
and water, mitigating the deleterious effects of radiation and low
gravity, among other issues. Unlike other fields, development into human
spaceflight, he said, “has become static.” Friedman agreed that we’ll
likely build bases on Mars, but the “evidence of history” suggests
colonization is unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Neuroscientist Rachael Seidler from the University of Florida says many
people today fail to appreciate how difficult it’ll be to sustain
colonies on the Red Planet.

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“That’s thousands of years in the making at least.”
“People like to be optimistic about the idea of colonizing Mars,”
Seidler, a specialist in motor learning and the effects of microgravity
on astronauts, told Gizmodo. “But it also sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky,”
she said. “A lot of people approach it as thinking we shouldn’t limit
ourselves based on practicalities, but I agree, there are a lot of
potential negative physiological consequences.”

Seidler said NASA and other space agencies are currently working very
hard to create and test countermeasures for the various negative impacts
of living on Mars. For example, astronauts on the ISS, who are subject
to tremendous muscle and bone loss, try to counteract the effects by
doing strength and aerobic training while up in space. As for treating
the resulting negative health impacts, whether caused by long-duration
stays on the ISS or from long-term living in the low-gravity environment
of Mars, “we’re not there yet,” said Seidler.

In his latest book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, cosmologist
and astrophysicist Martin Rees addressed the issue of colonizing Mars
rather succinctly:

By 2100 thrill seekers... may have established ‘bases’ independent from
the Earth—on Mars, or maybe on asteroids. Elon Musk (born in 1971) of
SpaceX says he wants to die on Mars—but not on impact. But don’t ever
expect mass emigration from Earth. And here I disagree strongly with
Musk and with my late Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, who enthuse
about rapid build-up of large-scale Martian communities. It’s a
dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s
problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate
change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming
Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement
as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no ‘Planet B’ for
ordinary risk-averse people.

Indeed, there’s the whole terraforming issue to consider. By
terraforming, scientists are referring to the hypothetical prospect of
geoengineering a planet to make it habitable for humans and other life.
For Mars, that would mean the injection of oxygen and other gases into
the atmosphere to raise surface temperature and air pressure, among
other interventions. A common argument in favor of colonizing Mars is
that it’ll allow us to begin the process of transforming the planet to a
habitable state. This scenario has been tackled by a number of science
fiction authors, including Kim Stanley Robinson in his acclaimed Mars
Trilogy. But as Friedman told Gizmodo, “that’s thousands of years in the
making at least.”

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Briony Horgan, assistant professor of planetary science at Purdue
University, said Martian terraforming is a pipedream, a prospect that’s
“way beyond any kind of technology we’re going to have any time soon,”
she told Gizmodo.

Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Screenshot: Still from Total Recall (1990)
When it comes to terraforming Mars, there’s also the logistics to
consider, and the materials available to the geoengineers who would dare
to embark upon such a multi-generational project. In their 2018 Nature
paper, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards from the University of
Colorado, Boulder sought to understand how much carbon dioxide would be
needed to increase the air pressure on Mars to the point where humans
could work on the surface without having to wear pressure suits, and to
increase temperature such that liquid water could exist and persist on
the surface. Jakosky and Edwards concluded that there’s not nearly
enough CO2 on Mars required for terraforming, and that future
geoengineers would have to somehow import the required gases to do so.

To be clear, terraforming is not necessarily an impossibility, but the
timeframes and technologies required preclude the possibility of
sustaining large, vibrant colonies on Mars for the foreseeable future.

Until such time, an un-terraformed Mars will present a hostile setting
for venturing pioneers. First and foremost there’s the intense radiation
to deal with, which will confront the colonists with a constant health
burden.

Horgan said there are many big challenges to colonizing Mars, with
radiation exposure being one of them. This is an “issue that a lot of
folks, including those at SpaceX, aren’t thinking about too clearly,”
she told Gizmodo. Living underground or in shielded bases may be an
option, she said, but we have to expect that cancer rates will still be
“an order of magnitude greater” given the added exposure over time.

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“You can only do so much with radiation protection,” Horgan said. “We
could quantify the risks for about a year, but not over the super long
term. The problem is that you can’t stay in there [i.e. underground or
in bases] forever. As soon as you go outside to do anything, you’re in
trouble,” she said.

Horgan pointed to a recent Nature study showing that radiation on Mars
is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term
solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.” Depending
on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns,
radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Friedman agrees that, in principle, we could create artificial
environments on Mars, whether by building domes or underground
dwellings. The radiation problem may be solvable, he said, “but the
problems are still huge, and in a sense anti-human.”

Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live
in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly protected surface
stations with severely minimized access to the outdoors. Life in this
closed environment, with limited access to the surface, could result in
other health issues related to exclusive indoor living, such as
depression, boredom from lack of stimulus, an inability to concentrate,
poor eyesight, and high blood pressure—not to mention a complete
disconnect from nature. And like the International Space Station,
Martian habitats will likely be a microbial desert, hosting only a tiny
sample of the bacteria needed to maintain a healthy human microbiome.

Another issue has to do with motivation. As Friedman pointed out
earlier, we don’t see colonists living in Antarctica or under the sea,
so why should we expect troves of people to want to live in a place
that’s considerably more unpleasant? It seems a poor alternative to
living on Earth, and certainly a major step down in terms of quality of
life. A strong case could even be made that, for prospective families
hoping to spawn future generations of Martian colonists, it’s borderline
cruelty.

And that’s assuming humans could even reproduce on Mars, which is an
open question. Casting aside the deleterious effects of radiation on the
developing fetus, there’s the issue of conception to consider in the
context of living in a minimal gravity environment. We don’t know how
sperm and egg will act on Mars, or how the first critical stages of
conception will occur. And most of all, we don’t know how low gravity
will affect the mother and fetus.

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Seidler, an expert in human physiology and kinesiology, said the issue
of human gestation on Mars is a troublesome unknown. The developing
fetus, she said, is likely to sit higher up in the womb owing to the
lower gravity, which will press upon the mother’s diaphragm, making it
hard for the mother to breathe. The low gravity may also “confuse” the
gestational process, delaying or interfering with critical phases of the
fetus’ development, such as the fetus dropping by week 39. On Earth,
bones, muscles, the circulatory system, and other aspects of human
physiology develop by working against gravity. It’s possible that the
human body might adapt to the low-gravity situation on Mars, but we
simply don’t know. An artificial womb might be a possible solution, but
again, that’s not something we’ll have access to anytime soon, nor does
it solve the low-gravity issue as it pertains to fetal development
(unless the artificial womb is placed in a centrifuge to simulate gravity).

A strong case can be made that any attempt to procreate on Mars should
be forbidden until more is known. Enforcing such a policy on a planet
that’s 34 million miles away at its closest is another question
entirely, though one would hope that Martian societies won’t regress to
lawlessness and a complete disregard of public safety and established
ethical standards.

For other colonists, the minimal gravity on Mars could result in serious
health problems over the long term. Studies of astronauts who have
participated in long-duration missions lasting about a year exhibit
troubling symptoms, including bone and muscle loss, cardiovascular
problems, immune and metabolic disorders, visual disorders, balance and
sensorimotor problems, among many other health issues. These problems
may not be as acute as those experienced on Mars, but again, we simply
don’t know. Perhaps after five or 10 or 20 years of constant exposure to
low gravity, similar gravity-related disorders will set in.

Seidler’s research into the effects of microgravity suggests it’s a
distinct possibility.

“Yes, there would be physiological and neural changes that would occur
on Mars due to its partial-gravity environment,” she told Gizmodo. “It’s
not clear whether these changes would plateau at some point. My work has
shown an upward shift of the brain within the skull in microgravity,
some regions of gray matter increases and others that decrease,
structural changes within the brain’s white matter, and fluid shifts
towards the top of the head.”

Seidler said some of these changes scale with the duration of
microgravity exposure, from two weeks up to six months, but she hasn’t
looked beyond that.

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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Cover of Martian Time Slip by Philip K. Dick. (1964,
Ballantine Books)
“Some of these effects would have to eventually plateau—there is a
structural limit on the fluid volume that the skull can contain, for
example,” she said. “And, the nervous system is very adaptable. It can
‘learn’ how to control movements in microgravity despite the altered
sensory inputs. But again, it’s unclear what the upper limits are.”

The effects of living in partial gravity compared to microgravity may
not be as severe, she said, but in either case, different sensory inputs
are going into the brain, as they’re not loaded by weight in the way
they’re used to. This can result in a poor sense of balance and
compromised motor functions, but research suggests astronauts in
microgravity eventually adapt.

“There are a lot of questions still unanswered about how microgravity
and partial gravity will affect human physiology,” Seidler told Gizmodo.
“We don’t yet understand the safety or health implications. More needs
to be done.”

Astronauts who return from long-duration missions have a rough go for
the first few days back on Earth, experiencing nausea, dizziness, and
weakness. Some astronauts, like NASA’s Scott Kelly, never feel like
their old selves again, including declines in cognitive test scores and
altered gene function. Work by NASA’s Scott Wood has shown that recovery
time for astronauts is proportionate to the length of the mission—the
longer the mission, the longer the recovery. Disturbingly, we have no
data for microgravity exposure beyond a year or so, and it’s an open
question as to the effects of low gravity on the human body after years,
or even decades, of exposure.

With this in mind, it’s an open question as to how Martian colonists
might fare upon a return visit to Earth. It might actually be a brutal
experience, especially after having experienced years in a partial
gravity environment. Children born on Mars (if that’s even a
possibility) might never be able to visit the planet where their species
originated.

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And these are the health issues we think might be a problem. A host of
other problems are likely to exist, giving rise to Martian-specific
diseases affecting our brains, bodies, and emotional well-being. The
human lifespan on Mars is likely to be significantly less than it is on
Earth, though again, we simply don’t know.

Finally, there’s the day-to-day survival to consider. Limited access to
fundamental resources, like food and water, could place further
constraints on a colony’s ability to grow and thrive.

“Establishing stable resources to live off for a long period of time is
possible, but it’ll be tough,” said Horgan. “We’ll want to be close to
water and water ice, but for that we’ll have to go pretty far north. But
the further north you go, the rougher the conditions get on the surface.
The winters are cold, and there’s less sunlight.”


Illustration: NASA
Colonists will also need stable food sources, and figure out a way to
keep plants away from radiation. The regolith, or soil, on Mars is
toxic, containing dangerous perchlorate chemicals, so that also needs to
be avoided. To grow crops, colonists will likely build subterranean
hydroponic greenhouses. This will require specialized lighting,
genetically modified plants designed specifically for Mars, and plenty
of water, the latter of which will be difficult to source on Mars.

“People don’t realize how complicated this is,” said Horgan. “Trying to
think about establishing colonies to point of what we would consider
safe will be a big challenge.”

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Technological solutions to these problems may exist, as are medical
interventions to treat Martian-specific diseases. But again, nothing
that we could possibly develop soon. And even if we do develop therapies
to treat humans living on Mars, these interventions are likely to be
limited in scope, with patients requiring constant care and attention.

As Martin Rees pointed out, Mars and other space environments are
“inherently hostile for humans,” but as he wrote in his book,

[We] (and our progeny here on Earth) should cheer on the brave space
adventurers, because they will have a pivotal role in spearheading the
post-human future and determining what happens in the twenty-second
century and beyond.

By post-human future, Rees is referring to a hypothetical future era in
which humans have undergone extensive biological and cybernetic
modifications such that they can no longer be classified as human. So
while Mars will remain inaccessible to ordinary, run-of-the-mill Homo
sapiens, the Red Planet could become available to those who dare to
modify themselves and their progeny.

A possible solution is to radically modify human biology to make Martian
colonists specially adapted to live, work, and procreate on the Red
Planet. As Rees wrote in On the Future:

So, because they will be ill-adapted to their new habitat, the pioneer
explorers will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on
Earth to redesign themselves. They’ll harness the super-powerful genetic
and cyborg technologies that will be developed in coming decades. These
techniques will be, one hopes, heavily regulated on Earth, on prudential
and ethical grounds, but ‘settlers’ on Mars will be far beyond the
clutches of the regulators. We should wish them good luck in modifying
their progeny to adapt to alien environments. This might be the first
step towards divergence into a new species. Genetic modification would
be supplemented by cyborg technology—indeed there may be a transition to
fully inorganic intelligences. So, it’s these space-faring adventurers,
not those of us comfortably adapted to life on Earth, who will spearhead
the posthuman era.

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Indeed, modifying humans to make them adaptable to living on Mars will
require dramatic changes.

Article preview thumbnail
Your Children Won't Be Able To Live In Space, Without A Major Upgrade
We all dream of journeying (or living) among the stars. But space is a
spectacularly awful place…

Read on io9.​gizmodo.​com
Our DNA would have to be tailored specifically to enable a long, healthy
life on Mars, including genetic tweaks for good muscle, bone, and brain
health. These traits could be made heritable, such that Martian
colonists could pass down the characteristics to their offspring. In
cases where biology is not up for the task, scientists could use
cybernetic enhancements, including artificial neurons or synthetic skin
capable of fending off dangerous UV rays. Nanotechnology in the form of
molecular machines could deliver medicines, perform repair work, and
eliminate the need for breathing and eating. Collectively, these changes
would result in an entirely new species of human—one built specifically
for Mars.

Synthetic biologist and geneticist Craig Venter believes this is a
distinct possibility—and a tantalizing prospect. While delivering a
keynote address at a NASA event in 2010, Venter said, “Not too many
things excite my imagination as trying to design organisms—even
people—for long-term space flight, and perhaps colonization of other
worlds.”

Like some of the other solutions proposed, this won’t happen any time
soon, nor will it be easy. And it may not even happen. Which brings a
rather discouraging prospect to mind: We may be stuck on Earth.

“Not too many things excite my imagination as trying to design
organisms—even people—for long term space flight, and perhaps
colonization of other worlds.”
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As Friedman pointed out, this carries some rather heavy existential and
philosophical implications. If humans can’t make it to Mars, it means
we’re destined to be “a single-planet species,” he said. What’s more, it
suggests extraterrestrial civilizations might be in the same boat, and
that the potential for “intelligent life to spread throughout the
universe is very, very gloomy,” he told Gizmodo.

“If we can’t make it to a nearby planet with an atmosphere, water, and a
stable surface—which in principle suggests we could do it—then certainly
we’re not going to make it much beyond that,” said Friedman. “But if
we’re doomed to be a single-planet species, then we need to recognize
both psychologically and technologically that we’re going to have live
within the limits of Earth.”

Which is a good point. That we may eventually become an interplanetary
or interstellar species remains an open question. We must work to make
this futuristic prospect a reality, but until then, we have to make sure
that Earth—the only habitable planet we know of—remains that way.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George Dvorsky
George is a senior staff reporter at Gizmodo.

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George Dvorsky
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 11:46am
One thing I didn’t mention in this piece is how, after Mars, the list of
other viable places to set up colonies falls off sharply. Realistically,
we only have the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to consider, which present
their own challenges, including the tremendous amount of radiation
pouring out from the gas giants.

69
Reply17 replies

Nimo
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 12:32pm
Why not the skies of Venus? Sure, there’s zero land so everything would
have to be built, but above 65 km from the surface, the pressure and
temperature is almost the same as Earth. On top of that, because of how
thick the atmosphere CO2 is, you could literally just fill balloons with
oxygen and float!

27
Reply7 replies

arnastu
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:20pm
I think you could also have looked more at the microbiology of
sequestration. We wouldn’t be going to Mars alone - we would also be
taking along our gut, oral, and skin flora, and whatever viruses
happened to be present in the astronauts. That flora is necessary to our
survival. We tend to kind of take the regulation of our digestive tracts
for granted, but our gut tube isn’t a simple machine that absorbs
nutrients. It works properly only with an elaborately interdependent
population of bacteria. We are obligate symbiotes. Our best treatment so
far for gut microbiota dysregulation is a fecal transplant. Give you
someone else’s healthy bacterial zoo, cause we don’t know how to achieve
that by less 14th-century methods. If any one type of bacteria gets out
of order, we rely on the rest of them to condition and out-compete the
miscreants. We don’t want to kill them - that wouldn’t be good either -
we just want them to exist in overall harmony, achieved by means we
don’t even understand. Here on earth that flora is informed by
interaction with the whole rest of the world, and it in turn educates
our immune systems. On Mars, with no niches occupied by anything else
and everything subject to radiation and various other unnatural
influences, you’d have perfectly ordinary bacteria turning pathogenic,
immune systems going wack, viruses that hadn’t even been characterized
taking on new roles.

The idea of human bodies as stand-alone machines that you can fuel up
with water, air, fats, carbs, essential amino acids and expect them to
tick along, amputed from the rest of life, is a profound
misunderstanding of what life is.

28
Reply2 replies

Citizen-Snips
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:25pm
Great piece George, as usual. The other thing you don’t mention about
the viability of Mars colonies is that there is no economic incentive to
go there. While of course economic incentives don’t motivate everything
we do, the complete lack of economic incentives of living on Mars makes
the prospect of long term habitation extremely unlikely, even if it were
possible.

As you pointed out, Antarctica is much much more hospitable to human
habitation than Mars, yet outside of a few isolated science stations no
one lives there. Why? Because there is no money to be made. People may
climb Mt. Everest or go to the Moon “because it is there,” but they
don’t stay unless there is an economic reason to do so.


John McPolymath
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:42pm
With all due respect, George, I don’t believe you have taken human
ingenuity into account. Mars could be transformed into a planet with a
livable surface within a century—possibly much sooner.

It seems to me that you are being excessively and unreasonably negative,
playing Devil’s advocate, when many potential and actual solutions exist
to address the issues which you have presented. I can offer you a
solution to many of those myself.

The truly important question is whether humanity will ever develop
enough interest in leaving Earth in order to spread and to protect the
only known lifeforms in the Universe from the disaster which will
inevitably destroy all life on Earth.

...Also for abundant and unlimited resources, an impossibly huge amount
of living space, the sheer joy of exploration and discovery, and
entertainment.

But the life thing—that’s pretty important too.

18
Reply13 replies

NJM Punk
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 10:32am
Th
J. Clarke
2019-07-31 04:09:14 UTC
Permalink
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Dorothy J Heydt
2019-07-31 04:21:06 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.

Whether the copyright holder would object (and perhaps resort to
law) to being quoted at such length, or whether he would be
delighted to have had his ideas promulgated in another venue, is
something neither you nor I can know.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/
J. Clarke
2019-07-31 04:59:16 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.
It is a common misconception that giving attribution is all that is
needed in order to republish copyrighted material. It is not.
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Whether the copyright holder would object (and perhaps resort to
law) to being quoted at such length, or whether he would be
delighted to have had his ideas promulgated in another venue, is
something neither you nor I can know.
This is true, however it is (a) in violation of the law and (b) a
massive wall of text that is much harder to read than the link, which
would have sufficed.
Scott Lurndal
2019-07-31 13:30:03 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.
Whether the copyright holder would object
And they would, since they derive their income from URL clicks.
Dorothy J Heydt
2019-07-31 15:49:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Scott Lurndal
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.
Whether the copyright holder would object
And they would, since they derive their income from URL clicks.
And that's the reason they posted?

/shrug

Let 'em sue, then.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/
Magewolf
2019-07-31 16:47:19 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Scott Lurndal
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.
Whether the copyright holder would object
And they would, since they derive their income from URL clicks.
And that's the reason they posted?
/shrug
Let 'em sue, then.
Sure and that is the reason you get so many stupid articles designed
just to upset people so they will click through to see how someone could
be so wrong.
Dorothy J Heydt
2019-07-31 18:58:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by Magewolf
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Scott Lurndal
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.
Whether the copyright holder would object
And they would, since they derive their income from URL clicks.
And that's the reason they posted?
/shrug
Let 'em sue, then.
Sure and that is the reason you get so many stupid articles designed
just to upset people so they will click through to see how someone could
be so wrong.
In which case I look at the title and move on. If something is
*interestingly* wrong, Hal will see it referenced on Pharyngula
or one of the other blogs he reads, and tell me about it.

Cf. ever so many xkcd pages whose theme is "Somebody is wrong on
the Internet!"
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/
Gene Wirchenko
2019-08-01 05:08:08 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Scott Lurndal
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.
Whether the copyright holder would object
And they would, since they derive their income from URL clicks.
And that's the reason they posted?
Probably part of it. Why mess with someone's income?
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
/shrug
Let 'em sue, then.
If so, then you do not have much of a defence. Maybe, that house
you have been mentioning would get sold.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko
Titus G
2019-08-01 05:14:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Gene Wirchenko
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Scott Lurndal
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:35:00 -0700, a425couple
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Do you have permission from the copyright holder to post the wall of
text you just posted?
Well, he did give proper attribution.
Whether the copyright holder would object
And they would, since they derive their income from URL clicks.
And that's the reason they posted?
Probably part of it. Why mess with someone's income?
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
/shrug
Let 'em sue, then.
If so, then you do not have much of a defence. Maybe, that house
you have been mentioning would get sold.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Relax Gene. Dorothy didn't post the original article.
Quadibloc
2019-07-31 04:17:19 UTC
Permalink
I saw the article on Google News and read it at a website.

It's true that Mars' gravity can't be fixed. But that undergound bases with an
artificial environment couldn't be made other than claustrophobic - that is, in
my opinion, an unjustified assumption.

Yes, initially, bringing stuff to Mars is so expensive, a base there would be
built with the bare minimum. But if local Martian materials can be used, perhaps
large spaces could be hollowed out underground on Mars.

Not that this makes it necessary or likely we will do it, but it's not, in my
opinion, something we can show to be impossible.

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-07-31 04:32:03 UTC
Permalink
On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 21:17:19 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
I saw the article on Google News and read it at a website.
It's true that Mars' gravity can't be fixed. But that undergound bases with an
artificial environment couldn't be made other than claustrophobic - that is, in
my opinion, an unjustified assumption.
Yes, initially, bringing stuff to Mars is so expensive, a base there would be
built with the bare minimum. But if local Martian materials can be used, perhaps
large spaces could be hollowed out underground on Mars.
Not that this makes it necessary or likely we will do it, but it's not, in my
opinion, something we can show to be impossible.
If we send men and women, sooner or later there's going to be a kid.
The kid can't come back to Earth so the parents have to stay on Mars,
at least long enough for the kid to be able to fend for itself, and by
that time the parents are unlikely to have remained in the kind of
physical condition that would let them return to Earth. If there's
one kid, eventually there will be another, and after a while you have
a colony whether you want to or not.
Johnny1A
2019-07-31 04:50:00 UTC
Permalink
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)
George Dvorsky
Today 10:05amFiled to: MARS
The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting
colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this
lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not
intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live
on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh
Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to
humans.
Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system,
and that’s not saying much.
The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times
thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars
is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to
protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is
very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You
might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe
form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and
body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that
heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars
is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures
dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the
coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in
Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once
temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t
properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in
within about five to seven minutes.
The notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense.
Mars also has less mass than is typically appreciated. Gravity on the
Red Planet is 0.375 that of Earth’s, which means a 180-pound person on
Earth would weigh a scant 68 pounds on Mars. While that might sound
appealing, this low-gravity environment would likely wreak havoc to
human health in the long term, and possibly have negative impacts on
human fertility.
Yet despite these and a plethora of other issues, there’s this popular
idea floating around that we’ll soon be able to set up colonies on Mars
with ease. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is projecting colonies on Mars as early
as the 2050s, while astrobiologist Lewis Darnell, a professor at the
University of Westminster, has offered a more modest estimate, saying
it’ll be about 50 to 100 years before “substantial numbers of people
have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns.” The United Arab
Emirates is aiming to build a Martian city of 600,000 occupants by 2117,
in one of the more ambitious visions of the future.
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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Soviet artist Andrei Sokolov (mid-1960s)
Sadly, this is literally science fiction. While there’s no doubt in my
mind that humans will eventually visit Mars and even build a base or
two, the notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense, and an unmitigated denial of the
tremendous challenges posed by such a prospect.
Pioneering astronautics engineer Louis Friedman, co-founder of the
Planetary Society and author of Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the
Stars, likens this unfounded enthusiasm to the unfulfilled visions
proposed during the 1940s and 1950s.
“Back then, cover stories of magazines like Popular Mechanics and
Popular Science showed colonies under the oceans and in the Antarctic,”
Friedman told Gizmodo. The feeling was that humans would find a way to
occupy every nook and cranny of the planet, no matter how challenging or
inhospitable, he said. “But this just hasn’t happened. We make
occasional visits to Antarctica and we even have some bases there, but
that’s about it. Under the oceans it’s even worse, with some limited
human operations, but in reality it’s really very, very little.” As for
human colonies in either of these environments, not so much. In fact,
not at all, despite the relative ease at which we could achieve this.
After the Moon landings, Friedman said he and his colleagues were hugely
optimistic about the future, believing “we would do more and more
things, such as place colonies on Mars and the Moon,” but the “fact is,
no human spaceflight program, whether Apollo, the Space Shuttle Program,
or the International Space Station,” has established the necessary
groundwork for setting up colonies on Mars, such as building the
required infrastructure, finding safe and viable ways of sourcing food
and water, mitigating the deleterious effects of radiation and low
gravity, among other issues. Unlike other fields, development into human
spaceflight, he said, “has become static.” Friedman agreed that we’ll
likely build bases on Mars, but the “evidence of history” suggests
colonization is unlikely for the foreseeable future.
Neuroscientist Rachael Seidler from the University of Florida says many
people today fail to appreciate how difficult it’ll be to sustain
colonies on the Red Planet.
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“That’s thousands of years in the making at least.”
“People like to be optimistic about the idea of colonizing Mars,”
Seidler, a specialist in motor learning and the effects of microgravity
on astronauts, told Gizmodo. “But it also sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky,”
she said. “A lot of people approach it as thinking we shouldn’t limit
ourselves based on practicalities, but I agree, there are a lot of
potential negative physiological consequences.”
Seidler said NASA and other space agencies are currently working very
hard to create and test countermeasures for the various negative impacts
of living on Mars. For example, astronauts on the ISS, who are subject
to tremendous muscle and bone loss, try to counteract the effects by
doing strength and aerobic training while up in space. As for treating
the resulting negative health impacts, whether caused by long-duration
stays on the ISS or from long-term living in the low-gravity environment
of Mars, “we’re not there yet,” said Seidler.
In his latest book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, cosmologist
and astrophysicist Martin Rees addressed the issue of colonizing Mars
By 2100 thrill seekers... may have established ‘bases’ independent from
the Earth—on Mars, or maybe on asteroids. Elon Musk (born in 1971) of
SpaceX says he wants to die on Mars—but not on impact. But don’t ever
expect mass emigration from Earth. And here I disagree strongly with
Musk and with my late Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, who enthuse
about rapid build-up of large-scale Martian communities. It’s a
dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s
problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate
change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming
Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement
as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no ‘Planet B’ for
ordinary risk-averse people.
Indeed, there’s the whole terraforming issue to consider. By
terraforming, scientists are referring to the hypothetical prospect of
geoengineering a planet to make it habitable for humans and other life.
For Mars, that would mean the injection of oxygen and other gases into
the atmosphere to raise surface temperature and air pressure, among
other interventions. A common argument in favor of colonizing Mars is
that it’ll allow us to begin the process of transforming the planet to a
habitable state. This scenario has been tackled by a number of science
fiction authors, including Kim Stanley Robinson in his acclaimed Mars
Trilogy. But as Friedman told Gizmodo, “that’s thousands of years in the
making at least.”
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Briony Horgan, assistant professor of planetary science at Purdue
University, said Martian terraforming is a pipedream, a prospect that’s
“way beyond any kind of technology we’re going to have any time soon,”
she told Gizmodo.
Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Screenshot: Still from Total Recall (1990)
When it comes to terraforming Mars, there’s also the logistics to
consider, and the materials available to the geoengineers who would dare
to embark upon such a multi-generational project. In their 2018 Nature
paper, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards from the University of
Colorado, Boulder sought to understand how much carbon dioxide would be
needed to increase the air pressure on Mars to the point where humans
could work on the surface without having to wear pressure suits, and to
increase temperature such that liquid water could exist and persist on
the surface. Jakosky and Edwards concluded that there’s not nearly
enough CO2 on Mars required for terraforming, and that future
geoengineers would have to somehow import the required gases to do so.
To be clear, terraforming is not necessarily an impossibility, but the
timeframes and technologies required preclude the possibility of
sustaining large, vibrant colonies on Mars for the foreseeable future.
Until such time, an un-terraformed Mars will present a hostile setting
for venturing pioneers. First and foremost there’s the intense radiation
to deal with, which will confront the colonists with a constant health
burden.
Horgan said there are many big challenges to colonizing Mars, with
radiation exposure being one of them. This is an “issue that a lot of
folks, including those at SpaceX, aren’t thinking about too clearly,”
she told Gizmodo. Living underground or in shielded bases may be an
option, she said, but we have to expect that cancer rates will still be
“an order of magnitude greater” given the added exposure over time.
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“You can only do so much with radiation protection,” Horgan said. “We
could quantify the risks for about a year, but not over the super long
term. The problem is that you can’t stay in there [i.e. underground or
in bases] forever. As soon as you go outside to do anything, you’re in
trouble,” she said.
Horgan pointed to a recent Nature study showing that radiation on Mars
is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term
solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.” Depending
on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns,
radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Friedman agrees that, in principle, we could create artificial
environments on Mars, whether by building domes or underground
dwellings. The radiation problem may be solvable, he said, “but the
problems are still huge, and in a sense anti-human.”
Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live
in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly protected surface
stations with severely minimized access to the outdoors. Life in this
closed environment, with limited access to the surface, could result in
other health issues related to exclusive indoor living, such as
depression, boredom from lack of stimulus, an inability to concentrate,
poor eyesight, and high blood pressure—not to mention a complete
disconnect from nature. And like the International Space Station,
Martian habitats will likely be a microbial desert, hosting only a tiny
sample of the bacteria needed to maintain a healthy human microbiome.
Another issue has to do with motivation. As Friedman pointed out
earlier, we don’t see colonists living in Antarctica or under the sea,
so why should we expect troves of people to want to live in a place
that’s considerably more unpleasant? It seems a poor alternative to
living on Earth, and certainly a major step down in terms of quality of
life. A strong case could even be made that, for prospective families
hoping to spawn future generations of Martian colonists, it’s borderline
cruelty.
And that’s assuming humans could even reproduce on Mars, which is an
open question. Casting aside the deleterious effects of radiation on the
developing fetus, there’s the issue of conception to consider in the
context of living in a minimal gravity environment. We don’t know how
sperm and egg will act on Mars, or how the first critical stages of
conception will occur. And most of all, we don’t know how low gravity
will affect the mother and fetus.
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Seidler, an expert in human physiology and kinesiology, said the issue
of human gestation on Mars is a troublesome unknown. The developing
fetus, she said, is likely to sit higher up in the womb owing to the
lower gravity, which will press upon the mother’s diaphragm, making it
hard for the mother to breathe. The low gravity may also “confuse” the
gestational process, delaying or interfering with critical phases of the
fetus’ development, such as the fetus dropping by week 39. On Earth,
bones, muscles, the circulatory system, and other aspects of human
physiology develop by working against gravity. It’s possible that the
human body might adapt to the low-gravity situation on Mars, but we
simply don’t know. An artificial womb might be a possible solution, but
again, that’s not something we’ll have access to anytime soon, nor does
it solve the low-gravity issue as it pertains to fetal development
(unless the artificial womb is placed in a centrifuge to simulate gravity).
A strong case can be made that any attempt to procreate on Mars should
be forbidden until more is known. Enforcing such a policy on a planet
that’s 34 million miles away at its closest is another question
entirely, though one would hope that Martian societies won’t regress to
lawlessness and a complete disregard of public safety and established
ethical standards.
For other colonists, the minimal gravity on Mars could result in serious
health problems over the long term. Studies of astronauts who have
participated in long-duration missions lasting about a year exhibit
troubling symptoms, including bone and muscle loss, cardiovascular
problems, immune and metabolic disorders, visual disorders, balance and
sensorimotor problems, among many other health issues. These problems
may not be as acute as those experienced on Mars, but again, we simply
don’t know. Perhaps after five or 10 or 20 years of constant exposure to
low gravity, similar gravity-related disorders will set in.
Seidler’s research into the effects of microgravity suggests it’s a
distinct possibility.
“Yes, there would be physiological and neural changes that would occur
on Mars due to its partial-gravity environment,” she told Gizmodo. “It’s
not clear whether these changes would plateau at some point. My work has
shown an upward shift of the brain within the skull in microgravity,
some regions of gray matter increases and others that decrease,
structural changes within the brain’s white matter, and fluid shifts
towards the top of the head.”
Seidler said some of these changes scale with the duration of
microgravity exposure, from two weeks up to six months, but she hasn’t
looked beyond that.
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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Cover of Martian Time Slip by Philip K. Dick. (1964,
Ballantine Books)
“Some of these effects would have to eventually plateau—there is a
structural limit on the fluid volume that the skull can contain, for
example,” she said. “And, the nervous system is very adaptable. It can
‘learn’ how to control movements in microgravity despite the altered
sensory inputs. But again, it’s unclear what the upper limits are.”
The effects of living in partial gravity compared to microgravity may
not be as severe, she said, but in either case, different sensory inputs
are going into the brain, as they’re not loaded by weight in the way
they’re used to. This can result in a poor sense of balance and
compromised motor functions, but research suggests astronauts in
microgravity eventually adapt.
“There are a lot of questions still unanswered about how microgravity
and partial gravity will affect human physiology,” Seidler told Gizmodo.
“We don’t yet understand the safety or health implications. More needs
to be done.”
Astronauts who return from long-duration missions have a rough go for
the first few days back on Earth, experiencing nausea, dizziness, and
weakness. Some astronauts, like NASA’s Scott Kelly, never feel like
their old selves again, including declines in cognitive test scores and
altered gene function. Work by NASA’s Scott Wood has shown that recovery
time for astronauts is proportionate to the length of the mission—the
longer the mission, the longer the recovery. Disturbingly, we have no
data for microgravity exposure beyond a year or so, and it’s an open
question as to the effects of low gravity on the human body after years,
or even decades, of exposure.
With this in mind, it’s an open question as to how Martian colonists
might fare upon a return visit to Earth. It might actually be a brutal
experience, especially after having experienced years in a partial
gravity environment. Children born on Mars (if that’s even a
possibility) might never be able to visit the planet where their species
originated.
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And these are the health issues we think might be a problem. A host of
other problems are likely to exist, giving rise to Martian-specific
diseases affecting our brains, bodies, and emotional well-being. The
human lifespan on Mars is likely to be significantly less than it is on
Earth, though again, we simply don’t know.
Finally, there’s the day-to-day survival to consider. Limited access to
fundamental resources, like food and water, could place further
constraints on a colony’s ability to grow and thrive.
“Establishing stable resources to live off for a long period of time is
possible, but it’ll be tough,” said Horgan. “We’ll want to be close to
water and water ice, but for that we’ll have to go pretty far north. But
the further north you go, the rougher the conditions get on the surface.
The winters are cold, and there’s less sunlight.”
Illustration: NASA
Colonists will also need stable food sources, and figure out a way to
keep plants away from radiation. The regolith, or soil, on Mars is
toxic, containing dangerous perchlorate chemicals, so that also needs to
be avoided. To grow crops, colonists will likely build subterranean
hydroponic greenhouses. This will require specialized lighting,
genetically modified plants designed specifically for Mars, and plenty
of water, the latter of which will be difficult to source on Mars.
“People don’t realize how complicated this is,” said Horgan. “Trying to
think about establishing colonies to point of what we would consider
safe will be a big challenge.”
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Technological solutions to these problems may exist, as are medical
interventions to treat Martian-specific diseases. But again, nothing
that we could possibly develop soon. And even if we do develop therapies
to treat humans living on Mars, these interventions are likely to be
limited in scope, with patients requiring constant care and attention.
As Martin Rees pointed out, Mars and other space environments are
“inherently hostile for humans,” but as he wrote in his book,
[We] (and our progeny here on Earth) should cheer on the brave space
adventurers, because they will have a pivotal role in spearheading the
post-human future and determining what happens in the twenty-second
century and beyond.
By post-human future, Rees is referring to a hypothetical future era in
which humans have undergone extensive biological and cybernetic
modifications such that they can no longer be classified as human. So
while Mars will remain inaccessible to ordinary, run-of-the-mill Homo
sapiens, the Red Planet could become available to those who dare to
modify themselves and their progeny.
A possible solution is to radically modify human biology to make Martian
colonists specially adapted to live, work, and procreate on the Red
So, because they will be ill-adapted to their new habitat, the pioneer
explorers will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on
Earth to redesign themselves. They’ll harness the super-powerful genetic
and cyborg technologies that will be developed in coming decades. These
techniques will be, one hopes, heavily regulated on Earth, on prudential
and ethical grounds, but ‘settlers’ on Mars will be far beyond the
clutches of the regulators. We should wish them good luck in modifying
their progeny to adapt to alien environments. This might be the first
step towards divergence into a new species. Genetic modification would
be supplemented by cyborg technology—indeed there may be a transition to
fully inorganic intelligences. So, it’s these space-faring adventurers,
not those of us comfortably adapted to life on Earth, who will spearhead
the posthuman era.
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Indeed, modifying humans to make them adaptable to living on Mars will
require dramatic changes.
Article preview thumbnail
Your Children Won't Be Able To Live In Space, Without A Major Upgrade
We all dream of journeying (or living) among the stars. But space is a
spectacularly awful place…
Read on io9.​gizmodo.​com
Our DNA would have to be tailored specifically to enable a long, healthy
life on Mars, including genetic tweaks for good muscle, bone, and brain
health. These traits could be made heritable, such that Martian
colonists could pass down the characteristics to their offspring. In
cases where biology is not up for the task, scientists could use
cybernetic enhancements, including artificial neurons or synthetic skin
capable of fending off dangerous UV rays. Nanotechnology in the form of
molecular machines could deliver medicines, perform repair work, and
eliminate the need for breathing and eating. Collectively, these changes
would result in an entirely new species of human—one built specifically
for Mars.
Synthetic biologist and geneticist Craig Venter believes this is a
distinct possibility—and a tantalizing prospect. While delivering a
keynote address at a NASA event in 2010, Venter said, “Not too many
things excite my imagination as trying to design organisms—even
people—for long-term space flight, and perhaps colonization of other
worlds.”
Like some of the other solutions proposed, this won’t happen any time
soon, nor will it be easy. And it may not even happen. Which brings a
rather discouraging prospect to mind: We may be stuck on Earth.
“Not too many things excite my imagination as trying to design
organisms—even people—for long term space flight, and perhaps
colonization of other worlds.”
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As Friedman pointed out, this carries some rather heavy existential and
philosophical implications. If humans can’t make it to Mars, it means
we’re destined to be “a single-planet species,” he said. What’s more, it
suggests extraterrestrial civilizations might be in the same boat, and
that the potential for “intelligent life to spread throughout the
universe is very, very gloomy,” he told Gizmodo.
“If we can’t make it to a nearby planet with an atmosphere, water, and a
stable surface—which in principle suggests we could do it—then certainly
we’re not going to make it much beyond that,” said Friedman. “But if
we’re doomed to be a single-planet species, then we need to recognize
both psychologically and technologically that we’re going to have live
within the limits of Earth.”
Which is a good point. That we may eventually become an interplanetary
or interstellar species remains an open question. We must work to make
this futuristic prospect a reality, but until then, we have to make sure
that Earth—the only habitable planet we know of—remains that way.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Dvorsky
George is a senior staff reporter at Gizmodo.
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George Dvorsky
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 11:46am
One thing I didn’t mention in this piece is how, after Mars, the list of
other viable places to set up colonies falls off sharply. Realistically,
we only have the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to consider, which present
their own challenges, including the tremendous amount of radiation
pouring out from the gas giants.
69
Reply17 replies
Nimo
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 12:32pm
Why not the skies of Venus? Sure, there’s zero land so everything would
have to be built, but above 65 km from the surface, the pressure and
temperature is almost the same as Earth. On top of that, because of how
thick the atmosphere CO2 is, you could literally just fill balloons with
oxygen and float!
27
Reply7 replies
arnastu
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:20pm
I think you could also have looked more at the microbiology of
sequestration. We wouldn’t be going to Mars alone - we would also be
taking along our gut, oral, and skin flora, and whatever viruses
happened to be present in the astronauts. That flora is necessary to our
survival. We tend to kind of take the regulation of our digestive tracts
for granted, but our gut tube isn’t a simple machine that absorbs
nutrients. It works properly only with an elaborately interdependent
population of bacteria. We are obligate symbiotes. Our best treatment so
far for gut microbiota dysregulation is a fecal transplant. Give you
someone else’s healthy bacterial zoo, cause we don’t know how to achieve
that by less 14th-century methods. If any one type of bacteria gets out
of order, we rely on the rest of them to condition and out-compete the
miscreants. We don’t want to kill them - that wouldn’t be good either -
we just want them to exist in overall harmony, achieved by means we
don’t even understand. Here on earth that flora is informed by
interaction with the whole rest of the world, and it in turn educates
our immune systems. On Mars, with no niches occupied by anything else
and everything subject to radiation and various other unnatural
influences, you’d have perfectly ordinary bacteria turning pathogenic,
immune systems going wack, viruses that hadn’t even been characterized
taking on new roles.
The idea of human bodies as stand-alone machines that you can fuel up
with water, air, fats, carbs, essential amino acids and expect them to
tick along, amputed from the rest of life, is a profound
misunderstanding of what life is.
28
Reply2 replies
Citizen-Snips
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:25pm
Great piece George, as usual. The other thing you don’t mention about
the viability of Mars colonies is that there is no economic incentive to
go there. While of course economic incentives don’t motivate everything
we do, the complete lack of economic incentives of living on Mars makes
the prospect of long term habitation extremely unlikely, even if it were
possible.
As you pointed out, Antarctica is much much more hospitable to human
habitation than Mars, yet outside of a few isolated science stations no
one lives there. Why? Because there is no money to be made. People may
climb Mt. Everest or go to the Moon “because it is there,” but they
don’t stay unless there is an economic reason to do so.
26
Reply8 replies
John McPolymath
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:42pm
With all due respect, George, I don’t believe you have taken human
ingenuity into account. Mars could be transformed into a planet with a
livable surface within a century—possibly much sooner.
It seems to me that you are being excessively and unreasonably negative,
playing Devil’s advocate, when many potential and actual solutions exist
to address the issues which you have presented. I can offer you a
solution to many of those myself.
The truly important question is whether humanity will ever develop
enough interest in leaving Earth in order to spread and to protect the
only known lifeforms in the Universe from the disaster which will
inevitably destroy all life on Earth.
...Also for abundant and unlimited resources, an impossibly huge amount
of living space, the sheer joy of exploration and discovery, and
entertainment.
But the life thing—that’s pretty important too.
SPACE
Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)
George Dvorsky
Today 10:05amFiled to: MARS
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8
The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting
colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this
lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not
intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live
on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh
Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to
humans.
Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system,
and that’s not saying much.
The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times
thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars
is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to
protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is
very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You
might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe
form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and
body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that
heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars
is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures
dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the
coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in
Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once
temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t
properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in
within about five to seven minutes.
The notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense.
Mars also has less mass than is typically appreciated. Gravity on the
Red Planet is 0.375 that of Earth’s, which means a 180-pound person on
Earth would weigh a scant 68 pounds on Mars. While that might sound
appealing, this low-gravity environment would likely wreak havoc to
human health in the long term, and possibly have negative impacts on
human fertility.
Yet despite these and a plethora of other issues, there’s this popular
idea floating around that we’ll soon be able to set up colonies on Mars
with ease. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is projecting colonies on Mars as early
as the 2050s, while astrobiologist Lewis Darnell, a professor at the
University of Westminster, has offered a more modest estimate, saying
it’ll be about 50 to 100 years before “substantial numbers of people
have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns.” The United Arab
Emirates is aiming to build a Martian city of 600,000 occupants by 2117,
in one of the more ambitious visions of the future.
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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Soviet artist Andrei Sokolov (mid-1960s)
Sadly, this is literally science fiction. While there’s no doubt in my
mind that humans will eventually visit Mars and even build a base or
two, the notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense, and an unmitigated denial of the
tremendous challenges posed by such a prospect.
Pioneering astronautics engineer Louis Friedman, co-founder of the
Planetary Society and author of Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the
Stars, likens this unfounded enthusiasm to the unfulfilled visions
proposed during the 1940s and 1950s.
“Back then, cover stories of magazines like Popular Mechanics and
Popular Science showed colonies under the oceans and in the Antarctic,”
Friedman told Gizmodo. The feeling was that humans would find a way to
occupy every nook and cranny of the planet, no matter how challenging or
inhospitable, he said. “But this just hasn’t happened. We make
occasional visits to Antarctica and we even have some bases there, but
that’s about it. Under the oceans it’s even worse, with some limited
human operations, but in reality it’s really very, very little.” As for
human colonies in either of these environments, not so much. In fact,
not at all, despite the relative ease at which we could achieve this.
After the Moon landings, Friedman said he and his colleagues were hugely
optimistic about the future, believing “we would do more and more
things, such as place colonies on Mars and the Moon,” but the “fact is,
no human spaceflight program, whether Apollo, the Space Shuttle Program,
or the International Space Station,” has established the necessary
groundwork for setting up colonies on Mars, such as building the
required infrastructure, finding safe and viable ways of sourcing food
and water, mitigating the deleterious effects of radiation and low
gravity, among other issues. Unlike other fields, development into human
spaceflight, he said, “has become static.” Friedman agreed that we’ll
likely build bases on Mars, but the “evidence of history” suggests
colonization is unlikely for the foreseeable future.
Neuroscientist Rachael Seidler from the University of Florida says many
people today fail to appreciate how difficult it’ll be to sustain
colonies on the Red Planet.
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“That’s thousands of years in the making at least.”
“People like to be optimistic about the idea of colonizing Mars,”
Seidler, a specialist in motor learning and the effects of microgravity
on astronauts, told Gizmodo. “But it also sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky,”
she said. “A lot of people approach it as thinking we shouldn’t limit
ourselves based on practicalities, but I agree, there are a lot of
potential negative physiological consequences.”
Seidler said NASA and other space agencies are currently working very
hard to create and test countermeasures for the various negative impacts
of living on Mars. For example, astronauts on the ISS, who are subject
to tremendous muscle and bone loss, try to counteract the effects by
doing strength and aerobic training while up in space. As for treating
the resulting negative health impacts, whether caused by long-duration
stays on the ISS or from long-term living in the low-gravity environment
of Mars, “we’re not there yet,” said Seidler.
In his latest book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, cosmologist
and astrophysicist Martin Rees addressed the issue of colonizing Mars
By 2100 thrill seekers... may have established ‘bases’ independent from
the Earth—on Mars, or maybe on asteroids. Elon Musk (born in 1971) of
SpaceX says he wants to die on Mars—but not on impact. But don’t ever
expect mass emigration from Earth. And here I disagree strongly with
Musk and with my late Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, who enthuse
about rapid build-up of large-scale Martian communities. It’s a
dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s
problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate
change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming
Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement
as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no ‘Planet B’ for
ordinary risk-averse people.
Indeed, there’s the whole terraforming issue to consider. By
terraforming, scientists are referring to the hypothetical prospect of
geoengineering a planet to make it habitable for humans and other life.
For Mars, that would mean the injection of oxygen and other gases into
the atmosphere to raise surface temperature and air pressure, among
other interventions. A common argument in favor of colonizing Mars is
that it’ll allow us to begin the process of transforming the planet to a
habitable state. This scenario has been tackled by a number of science
fiction authors, including Kim Stanley Robinson in his acclaimed Mars
Trilogy. But as Friedman told Gizmodo, “that’s thousands of years in the
making at least.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Briony Horgan, assistant professor of planetary science at Purdue
University, said Martian terraforming is a pipedream, a prospect that’s
“way beyond any kind of technology we’re going to have any time soon,”
she told Gizmodo.
Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Screenshot: Still from Total Recall (1990)
When it comes to terraforming Mars, there’s also the logistics to
consider, and the materials available to the geoengineers who would dare
to embark upon such a multi-generational project. In their 2018 Nature
paper, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards from the University of
Colorado, Boulder sought to understand how much carbon dioxide would be
needed to increase the air pressure on Mars to the point where humans
could work on the surface without having to wear pressure suits, and to
increase temperature such that liquid water could exist and persist on
the surface. Jakosky and Edwards concluded that there’s not nearly
enough CO2 on Mars required for terraforming, and that future
geoengineers would have to somehow import the required gases to do so.
To be clear, terraforming is not necessarily an impossibility, but the
timeframes and technologies required preclude the possibility of
sustaining large, vibrant colonies on Mars for the foreseeable future.
Until such time, an un-terraformed Mars will present a hostile setting
for venturing pioneers. First and foremost there’s the intense radiation
to deal with, which will confront the colonists with a constant health
burden.
Horgan said there are many big challenges to colonizing Mars, with
radiation exposure being one of them. This is an “issue that a lot of
folks, including those at SpaceX, aren’t thinking about too clearly,”
she told Gizmodo. Living underground or in shielded bases may be an
option, she said, but we have to expect that cancer rates will still be
“an order of magnitude greater” given the added exposure over time.
ADVERTISEMENT
“You can only do so much with radiation protection,” Horgan said. “We
could quantify the risks for about a year, but not over the super long
term. The problem is that you can’t stay in there [i.e. underground or
in bases] forever. As soon as you go outside to do anything, you’re in
trouble,” she said.
Horgan pointed to a recent Nature study showing that radiation on Mars
is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term
solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.” Depending
on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns,
radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Friedman agrees that, in principle, we could create artificial
environments on Mars, whether by building domes or underground
dwellings. The radiation problem may be solvable, he said, “but the
problems are still huge, and in a sense anti-human.”
Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live
in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly...
Same old same old. These same arguments have been made and debunked so many times there's no point in repeating it.

The one issue that may actually be a show-stopper, of course, is gravity. We know that microgravity and free fall are very bad for health, long term. We know effectively _nothing at all_ about the effects of low-but-not-zero gravity on human health. Would Lunar gravity be as bad for you as free fall, long term? Worse? Better? We don't know.

Martian gravity? Worse, better, the same as free fall? We don't know.

Venusian gravity? We don't know.

Our entire data set comes from a handful of very short human stays on the Moon, half a century ago. That's all we have on the subject. No long-term data at all for males, no data at all for females.

That's the _big_ question hanging over the concept of planetary settlement. Nobody knows the answer and your guess is as good as NASA's medical staff, or as bad.

Likewise, if gravity is a show-stopper, we don't know if there are work-arounds or ways to deal with it (most likely there are, but we have no data to do anything but speculate about what it might be or how long it might be before they can be found).
Kade Green
2019-07-31 18:18:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by Johnny1A
if gravity is a show-stopper, we don't know if there are
work-arounds or ways to deal with it (most likely there are
Spin gravity. Isaac Arthur (makes future science videos on YouTube)
favors scaling up that carnival ride where you're spun around so fast
that you're pinned to the walls of the cylinder, and don't fall out
when the floor opens up. Take Martian down-gravity, add three-fifths
of a gee in spin gravity, and you have one Earth gravity on a circular
track with a floor that looks inclined from outside but feels level
inside. Not something you'd build for a short exploration stay, but
if you're at the colony stage it's not a big effort to make one large
enough that Coriolis force isn't a bother, even if you only use it for
sleeping quarters and gym space.
James Nicoll
2019-07-31 19:30:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by Kade Green
Post by Johnny1A
if gravity is a show-stopper, we don't know if there are
work-arounds or ways to deal with it (most likely there are
Spin gravity. Isaac Arthur (makes future science videos on YouTube)
favors scaling up that carnival ride where you're spun around so fast
that you're pinned to the walls of the cylinder, and don't fall out
when the floor opens up. Take Martian down-gravity, add three-fifths
of a gee in spin gravity, and you have one Earth gravity on a circular
track with a floor that looks inclined from outside but feels level
inside. Not something you'd build for a short exploration stay, but
if you're at the colony stage it's not a big effort to make one large
enough that Coriolis force isn't a bother, even if you only use it for
sleeping quarters and gym space.
That would have a glorious failure mode.
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll
Jack Bohn
2019-07-31 22:18:34 UTC
Permalink
Post by James Nicoll
if gravity is a show-stopper, we don't know if there are 
work-arounds or ways to deal with it (most likely there are 
 
Spin gravity.  Isaac Arthur (makes future science videos on YouTube) 
favors scaling up that carnival ride where you're spun around so fast 
that you're pinned to the walls of the cylinder, and don't fall out 
when the floor opens up.  Take Martian down-gravity, add three-fifths 
of a gee in spin gravity, and you have one Earth gravity on a circular 
track with a floor that looks inclined from outside but feels level 
inside.  Not something you'd build for a short exploration stay, but 
if you're at the colony stage it's not a big effort to make one large 
enough that Coriolis force isn't a bother, even if you only use it for 
sleeping quarters and gym space. 
That would have a glorious failure mode
I read recently, I wish I could remember where, a proposal to run such a device as a train or maglev. A circular track a mile across would need less than 180 mph, doable ckr hours a day.
--
-Jack
Johnny1A
2019-08-01 03:42:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by Kade Green
Post by Johnny1A
if gravity is a show-stopper, we don't know if there are
work-arounds or ways to deal with it (most likely there are
Spin gravity. Isaac Arthur (makes future science videos on YouTube)
favors scaling up that carnival ride where you're spun around so fast
that you're pinned to the walls of the cylinder, and don't fall out
when the floor opens up. Take Martian down-gravity, add three-fifths
of a gee in spin gravity, and you have one Earth gravity on a circular
track with a floor that looks inclined from outside but feels level
inside. Not something you'd build for a short exploration stay, but
if you're at the colony stage it's not a big effort to make one large
enough that Coriolis force isn't a bother, even if you only use it for
sleeping quarters and gym space.
That might be OK for a military base or science facility or other short-occupancy facility, but it won't cut it for large-scale colonization.
Sylvain
2019-07-31 05:55:32 UTC
Permalink
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)
humanity is going soon to drive the Earth into a world
impossible to live,

How do you want that the humanity drive Mars into a habitable world ?
a***@yahoo.com
2019-07-31 13:48:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by a425couple
from
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-colonize-mars-1836316222
Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)
The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times
thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars
is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to
protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is
very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You
might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe
form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and
body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that
heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars
is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures
dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the
coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in
Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once
temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t
properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in
within about five to seven minutes.
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
Quadibloc
2019-07-31 18:40:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for President Trump.

John Savard
Dorothy J Heydt
2019-07-31 19:00:16 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?

/googles

Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/
Quadibloc
2019-07-31 23:46:14 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.

John Savard
Dorothy J Heydt
2019-08-01 00:28:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/
Dimensional Traveler
2019-08-01 03:14:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.

...

Ya, okay, they're disconnected from reality.
--
Inquiring minds want to know while minds with a self-preservation
instinct are running screaming.
J. Clarke
2019-08-01 03:36:14 UTC
Permalink
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
Alan Baker
2019-08-01 03:41:41 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
When the fantastically rich weren't taking so much...
h***@gmail.com
2019-08-01 14:23:10 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan Baker
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
When the fantastically rich weren't taking so much...
and they thought the way of doing that was to vote in a narcissistic billionaire who's priority was tax cuts for the wealthy...
Dimensional Traveler
2019-08-01 22:18:23 UTC
Permalink
Post by h***@gmail.com
Post by Alan Baker
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
When the fantastically rich weren't taking so much...
and they thought the way of doing that was to vote in a narcissistic billionaire who's priority was tax cuts for the wealthy...
But he promised that 1) He'd cut their taxes too; and B) This time
trickle-down economics would finally, really, work!
--
Inquiring minds want to know while minds with a self-preservation
instinct are running screaming.
Titus G
2019-08-02 01:07:12 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dimensional Traveler
On Thursday, August 1, 2019 at 1:41:44 PM UTC+10, Alan Baker
Post by Alan Baker
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
In article
On Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at 1:15:02 PM UTC-6, Dorothy
In article
On Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at 7:49:02 AM UTC-6,
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional
creature. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for
President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the
association between rats and Baltimore - was not obscure.
And now that Trump has said that black America loves it
when he says things like that... first vicious personal
insults because someone has dared to be critical of him,
now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and
more that they don't like current reality and want to roll
the calendar back to the way they want to think things used
to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and
there was work for people with no skills?
When the fantastically rich weren't taking so much...
and they thought the way of doing that was to vote in a
narcissistic billionaire who's priority was tax cuts for the
wealthy...
But he promised that 1) He'd cut their taxes too; and B) This time
trickle-down economics would finally, really, work!
“But the degrees. I have no degrees,” Henry pleaded.

“First, we shall
get the college on its feet. Then the college will grant you every
degree that is needed.”

“I will get my degrees from my own college? Me,
the president of that college? Do you think it is right, Mr. Bayfield?”

“This is the West, Mr. Watt. Here, men are not so dependent on the
opinions of others. Here, it matters less what others think than what a
man himself says he is."

Lake Wobegon Days (Garrison Keillor)
- Your Highlight on page 43 | location 652-655
Dorothy J Heydt
2019-08-01 04:28:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association
between rats
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that
black America
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect
from reality.
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
As long as you were white.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/
Moriarty
2019-08-01 05:00:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association
between rats
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that
black America
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect
from reality.
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
As long as you were white.
Being male helped too.

-Moriarty
J. Clarke
2019-08-01 12:06:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association
between rats
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that
black America
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect
from reality.
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
As long as you were white.
My father's best friend was one of the blackest people you would ever
see. He was a gandy dancer (that job doesn't exist anymore, there are
machines that do that). He put 8 kids through college and died
wealthy. Gandy dancing was hard work, but it paid well. There were
many jobs of that nature that were open to black people.

The notion that there was no work for black people or that it didn't
pay well in the '50s has about as much truth as that people believed
the Earth was flat in Columbus' time.
Scott Lurndal
2019-08-01 14:22:52 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
As long as you were white.
My father's best friend was one of the blackest people you would ever
see. He was a gandy dancer (that job doesn't exist anymore, there are
machines that do that). He put 8 kids through college and died
wealthy. Gandy dancing was hard work, but it paid well. There were
many jobs of that nature that were open to black people.
That's one. How about the million others that weren't so fortunate,
particularly in the deep south?
h***@gmail.com
2019-08-01 14:53:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association
between rats
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that
black America
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults
because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect
from reality.
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
As long as you were white.
My father's best friend was one of the blackest people you would ever
see. He was a gandy dancer (that job doesn't exist anymore, there are
machines that do that). He put 8 kids through college and died
wealthy. Gandy dancing was hard work, but it paid well. There were
many jobs of that nature that were open to black people.
That seems to have been highly variable.
In 1918 it was $5 a week
In the 20s and 30s it didn't pay so well about $40 a month.
during WWII it was paid a lot better in other areas at $55 a week according to one of the women who signed up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandy_dancer
Post by J. Clarke
The notion that there was no work for black people or that it didn't
pay well in the '50s has about as much truth as that people believed
the Earth was flat in Columbus' time.
median income in 1950 was 3300 a year, median black income was 1869
1955 4418, black 2544
1960 5620, black 3230
source https://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/yi/yi16.pdf

so while there were probably some black people who got good money the overall situation was they were paid a lot less than whites were

Ben Carson's success as a surgeon and Barack Obama's political and writing career don't prove that there's no racism or economic disadvantage now either
Alan Baker
2019-08-01 16:08:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
In article
On Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at 1:15:02 PM UTC-6, Dorothy
In article
On Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at 7:49:02 AM UTC-6,
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional
creature. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for
President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the
association
between rats
Post by Dimensional Traveler
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has
said that
black America
Post by Dimensional Traveler
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious
personal insults because someone has dared to be critical
of him, now a complete disconnect
from reality.
Post by Dimensional Traveler
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and
more that they don't like current reality and want to roll
the calendar back to the way they want to think things used
to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and
there was work for people with no skills?
As long as you were white.
My father's best friend was one of the blackest people you would
ever see. He was a gandy dancer (that job doesn't exist anymore,
there are machines that do that). He put 8 kids through college
and died wealthy. Gandy dancing was hard work, but it paid well.
There were many jobs of that nature that were open to black
people.
That seems to have been highly variable. In 1918 it was $5 a week In
the 20s and 30s it didn't pay so well about $40 a month.
Ummm... You want to check your figures on that? $40 a month is MORE than
$5 a week.

Other than that... ...carry on.

<snip>
h***@gmail.com
2019-08-01 16:52:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan Baker
That seems to have been highly variable. In 1918 it was $5 a week In
the 20s and 30s it didn't pay so well about $40 a month.
Ummm... You want to check your figures on that? $40 a month is MORE than
$5 a week.
I found the 1918 figure after the other figures and dumped it in later.
Put a still in there if it worries you.
Alan Baker
2019-08-01 17:28:08 UTC
Permalink
Post by h***@gmail.com
Post by Alan Baker
That seems to have been highly variable. In 1918 it was $5 a week In
the 20s and 30s it didn't pay so well about $40 a month.
Ummm... You want to check your figures on that? $40 a month is MORE than
$5 a week.
I found the 1918 figure after the other figures and dumped it in later.
Put a still in there if it worries you.
It doesn't worry me...

...but others will seize on it if you don't acknowledge it. That's just
the way it goes.

:-)
Alan Baker
2019-08-01 16:06:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association
between rats
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that
black America
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect
from reality.
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
As long as you were white.
My father's best friend was one of the blackest people you would ever
see. He was a gandy dancer (that job doesn't exist anymore, there are
machines that do that). He put 8 kids through college and died
wealthy. Gandy dancing was hard work, but it paid well. There were
many jobs of that nature that were open to black people.
The notion that there was no work for black people or that it didn't
pay well in the '50s has about as much truth as that people believed
the Earth was flat in Columbus' time.
Look up "anecdotal"...
Quadibloc
2019-08-01 06:24:28 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
And that would be a good idea. Now that we've ended the kind of discrimination against black people that existed in the 1950s and earlier, if the economy were vigorous, it would allow a lot of them to successfully transition to the middle class. This might be enough to finally end the terrible division that the United States currently suffers.

And basically, it would require switching from globalism to protectionism. So that the economy could be stimulated enough to produce full employment without consequences such as a negative balance of trade leading to the currency losing its value.

Of course, there would be other consequences. Since now less labor would be wasted due to the idleness of unemployment, the country would be producing more. But it would be producing less efficiently, and this would involve a real transfer of wealth.

Things that we now purchase as cheap imports would be more expensive if they're made in the USA. So the people who had jobs under the old system would be paying to change the people who weren't from unemployed to employed.

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-08-01 12:11:06 UTC
Permalink
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 23:24:28 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
And that would be a good idea. Now that we've ended the kind of discrimination against black people that existed in the 1950s and earlier, if the economy were vigorous, it would allow a lot of them to successfully transition to the middle class. This might be enough to finally end the terrible division that the United States currently suffers.
And basically, it would require switching from globalism to protectionism. So that the economy could be stimulated enough to produce full employment without consequences such as a negative balance of trade leading to the currency losing its value.
Sorry, but that wouldn't work. Protectionism means that the US is the
only market for US products. What made the economy in the '50s so
strong was that the US was about the only place around with any real
production capacity and the willingess to make what the market wanted.
Europe and Japan were bombed-out ruins and the Soviet Union never
quite got the message about finding markets.

Also, the labor force at the time was smaller--people encouraged women
to do things other than working, only they expected their husbands to
pay for it instead of the government, so they were pretty much out of
the white- and blue- collar workforces (there was a "pink collar"
workforce then as well, which mostly doesn't exist anymore--the
position of "secretary" has pretty much disappeared except at the
highest levels--so has "stenographer", "clerk typist", "keypunch
operator", and "computer" among others).
Post by Quadibloc
Of course, there would be other consequences. Since now less labor would be wasted due to the idleness of unemployment, the country would be producing more. But it would be producing less efficiently, and this would involve a real transfer of wealth.
Things that we now purchase as cheap imports would be more expensive if they're made in the USA. So the people who had jobs under the old system would be paying to change the people who weren't from unemployed to employed.
John Savard
Mike Van Pelt
2019-08-01 16:16:50 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 23:24:28 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
And basically, it would require switching from globalism to
protectionism. So that the economy could be stimulated enough to
produce full employment without consequences such as a negative
balance of trade leading to the currency losing its value.
Sorry, but that wouldn't work. Protectionism means that the US
is the only market for US products.
(and other good reasons protectionism isn't that great an idea)

This is, I think, a key reason that Trump won, that completely
blindsided Hillary and the Democratic Party leadership.

Trump's tradewarmongering, from the beginning of his campaign,
played very well with Labor.

No, not the Union leadership; the leadership of the unions is
a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. But the
rank and file ... that "American Jobs going overseas" stuff
resonates very strongly with them, by and large.
--
Mike Van Pelt | "I don't advise it unless you're nuts."
mvp at calweb.com | -- Ray Wilkinson, after riding out Hurricane
KE6BVH | Ike on Surfside Beach in Galveston
Quadibloc
2019-08-01 17:30:05 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Sorry, but that wouldn't work. Protectionism means that the US is the
only market for US products.
That's *already* true without protectionism, with the exception of products that
no one else can make.

China hasn't opened up its markets to the satisfaction of the rest of the world,
yet its products are bought everywhere. The United States, for obvious reasons,
cannot replicate that success.

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-08-01 23:33:43 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Sorry, but that wouldn't work. Protectionism means that the US is the
only market for US products.
That's *already* true without protectionism, with the exception of products that
no one else can make.
Which covers a good bit of territory.
Post by Quadibloc
China hasn't opened up its markets to the satisfaction of the rest of the world,
yet its products are bought everywhere. The United States, for obvious reasons,
cannot replicate that success.
Mostly because the Chinese managed to take a lot of market share.
David DeLaney
2019-08-03 05:01:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Now that we've ended the kind of discrimination against black people that
existed in the 1950s and earlier,

... oh, right, I keep forgetting that a) you live in Canada, where the
discrimination was against other colors-of-skin types and not against blacks in
anything like the way the USA had, and b) that you yourself are white, and
don't have black friends, and go "pish-posh" and wave your hand when you have
the chance to read about or listen to the kind of stuff they go through, even
to-day, in this here land of the somewhat free, because it's not how YOU think
things are in the USA, so can clearly be dismissed offhand as anecdotal.

If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd be rather closer
to the truth, but there's even still some of that around. Most notably, it
seems, in killed-by-police ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted
to those two situations.

Dave, but of course there's a government department to complain to, that makes
everything hunky-dory and stress-free, right?
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
my gatekeeper archives are no longer accessible :( / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Quadibloc
2019-08-03 05:26:30 UTC
Permalink
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd be rather closer
to the truth, but there's even still some of that around. Most notably, it
seems, in killed-by-police ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted
to those two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made what I meant
clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and blatantly bar black people from
certain forms of employment.

Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the problems if the
post-war economic boom was still going full blast when that happened. But
instead, shortly after the doors opened, there wasn't much left behind them.

I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was much worse in
the past.

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-08-03 06:23:55 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd be rather closer
to the truth, but there's even still some of that around. Most notably, it
seems, in killed-by-police ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted
to those two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made what I meant
clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and blatantly bar black people from
certain forms of employment.
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the problems if the
post-war economic boom was still going full blast when that happened. But
instead, shortly after the doors opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was much worse in
the past.
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
h***@gmail.com
2019-08-03 14:56:14 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd be rather closer
to the truth, but there's even still some of that around. Most notably, it
seems, in killed-by-police ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted
to those two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made what I meant
clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and blatantly bar black people from
certain forms of employment.
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the problems if the
post-war economic boom was still going full blast when that happened. But
instead, shortly after the doors opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was much worse in
the past.
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
Where the things that one needs to do are overwhelmingly being male and white...
Quadibloc
2019-08-03 20:52:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
I am aware that many black people in the United States are profoundly alienated
from the social mainstream. Thus, black children in school face enormous peer
pressures not to study hard, not to concentrate on achieving academically,
because many of them see doing so as knuckling under to the Man.

But how do we fix this?

A limping economy, one with jobs outsourced whenever possible and the country
flooded by cheap imports, is not one that sends the message to everyone that if
you're willing to work hard, there is remunerative honest work available to you.

Black people getting shot by police disproportionately - yes, but the extreme violence of drug gangs has led to the police having to adopt extremely cautious rules of engagement. This is another problem that isn't simple bigotry in action.

But the fix has to start with what we can control. We can't just tell the police to be heedless of their own safety, even as we do address specific egregious cases. Instead, we have to go to the root of the problem.

Why so many black criminals? Insufficient black opportunities for honest work.

If all the black people lived in the suburbs instead of in the slums, there
would be no problem. Not from a change in housing alone, of course, but if
everything else associated with that was also changed: that is, if the black
people were moved out of poverty into the middle class. It isn't rocket science
to think that poor people are more likely to steal things or turn to dealing
drugs.

When I was a kid, people talked about how black people suffered from
"prejudice". That then was just a euphemism for out-and-out hatred and bigotry.
But today, prejudice is what they're suffering from - every black person is
assumed to be likely to be... what an uncomfortably high fraction (though still
small) of black people are like, a dangerous violent criminal.

You can't fix that by arguing people into ignoring realities that impinge on
their own safety. You fix that by changing the reality. And the part you can fix
and control is not how black people react to their appalling circumstances, but
rather that they start out from being poor and desperate.

John Savard
Robert Carnegie
2019-08-03 21:52:13 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
I am aware that many black people in the United States are profoundly alienated
from the social mainstream. Thus, black children in school face enormous peer
pressures not to study hard, not to concentrate on achieving academically,
because many of them see doing so as knuckling under to the Man.
But how do we fix this?
A limping economy, one with jobs outsourced whenever possible and the country
flooded by cheap imports, is not one that sends the message to everyone that if
you're willing to work hard, there is remunerative honest work available to you.
Black people getting shot by police disproportionately - yes, but the extreme violence of drug gangs has led to the police having to adopt extremely cautious rules of engagement. This is another problem that isn't simple bigotry in action.
But the fix has to start with what we can control. We can't just tell the police to be heedless of their own safety, even as we do address specific egregious cases. Instead, we have to go to the root of the problem.
Why so many black criminals? Insufficient black opportunities for honest work.
If all the black people lived in the suburbs instead of in the slums, there
would be no problem. Not from a change in housing alone, of course, but if
everything else associated with that was also changed: that is, if the black
people were moved out of poverty into the middle class. It isn't rocket science
to think that poor people are more likely to steal things or turn to dealing
drugs.
When I was a kid, people talked about how black people suffered from
"prejudice". That then was just a euphemism for out-and-out hatred and bigotry.
But today, prejudice is what they're suffering from - every black person is
assumed to be likely to be... what an uncomfortably high fraction (though still
small) of black people are like, a dangerous violent criminal.
You can't fix that by arguing people into ignoring realities that impinge on
their own safety. You fix that by changing the reality. And the part you can fix
and control is not how black people react to their appalling circumstances, but
rather that they start out from being poor and desperate.
John Savard
We call it "institutional racism", and if the institution
is the country as a whole then that is a big problem.
J. Clarke
2019-08-04 00:22:33 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
I am aware that many black people in the United States are profoundly alienated
from the social mainstream. Thus, black children in school face enormous peer
pressures not to study hard, not to concentrate on achieving academically,
because many of them see doing so as knuckling under to the Man.
But how do we fix this?
A limping economy, one with jobs outsourced whenever possible and the country
flooded by cheap imports, is not one that sends the message to everyone that if
you're willing to work hard, there is remunerative honest work available to you.
Black people getting shot by police disproportionately - yes, but the extreme violence of drug gangs has led to the police having to adopt extremely cautious rules of engagement. This is another problem that isn't simple bigotry in action.
But the fix has to start with what we can control. We can't just tell the police to be heedless of their own safety, even as we do address specific egregious cases. Instead, we have to go to the root of the problem.
Why so many black criminals? Insufficient black opportunities for honest work.
If all the black people lived in the suburbs instead of in the slums, there
would be no problem. Not from a change in housing alone, of course, but if
everything else associated with that was also changed: that is, if the black
people were moved out of poverty into the middle class. It isn't rocket science
to think that poor people are more likely to steal things or turn to dealing
drugs.
When I was a kid, people talked about how black people suffered from
"prejudice". That then was just a euphemism for out-and-out hatred and bigotry.
But today, prejudice is what they're suffering from - every black person is
assumed to be likely to be... what an uncomfortably high fraction (though still
small) of black people are like, a dangerous violent criminal.
You can't fix that by arguing people into ignoring realities that impinge on
their own safety. You fix that by changing the reality. And the part you can fix
and control is not how black people react to their appalling circumstances, but
rather that they start out from being poor and desperate.
So how do you do that? Remove all poor children from their birth
families and place them with middle class families?

Hint--a poor person with money is not a middle class person, a poor
person with money is a poor person with money. What makes someone
middle class is the attitudes and skills and connections that allow
earning that income, not the income itself.
Quadibloc
2019-08-04 06:36:30 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Hint--a poor person with money is not a middle class person, a poor
person with money is a poor person with money. What makes someone
middle class is the attitudes and skills and connections that allow
earning that income, not the income itself.
Well, I am looking at manipulating the economy so as to take poor people and
give them steady jobs instead of welfare cheques. That should help to make the
transformation possible.

That people adapt to survive with the resources they have does not make them
irredemiable.

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-08-04 13:44:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Hint--a poor person with money is not a middle class person, a poor
person with money is a poor person with money. What makes someone
middle class is the attitudes and skills and connections that allow
earning that income, not the income itself.
Well, I am looking at manipulating the economy so as to take poor people and
give them steady jobs instead of welfare cheques. That should help to make the
transformation possible.
Are you going to give them steady middle class jobs or minimum-wage
jobs that keep them one paycheck away from starvation? What are they
going to do in these steady jobs? Where is the money going to come
from? Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
Post by Quadibloc
That people adapt to survive with the resources they have does not make them
irredemiable.
We aren't talking about adapting to survive, we're talking about
refusal to adapt.
Quadibloc
2019-08-05 03:59:57 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-08-05 04:12:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
So you're going to close the borders to imports and put all the poor
people to work making goods that were formerly made by Chinese slave
labor, and you're going to pay them a middle-class wage to do this.

Where is the money going to come from? Not vague arm-waving, show me
the numbers.
Titus G
2019-08-05 06:18:14 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
So you're going to close the borders to imports and put all the poor
people to work making goods that were formerly made by Chinese slave
labor, and you're going to pay them a middle-class wage to do this.
Where is the money going to come from? Not vague arm-waving, show me
the numbers.
(Posted on behalf of my Chinese friend.)

Obviously the money is going to come from valuable Detroit real estate
sold to the billionaire Chinese people of influence such as slave
traders, Apple factory managers and escapees from Hong Kong. Tariffs
will be imposed on Canadians earning billions from advising and
correcting the poor people across their southern border with wisdom and
knowledge unparalleled in the fields of economics, constitutional law,
white supremacy, Zionism and Vat Girls.
Sincerely,
Wun Hung Low.
Dimensional Traveler
2019-08-05 12:35:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market
with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
So you're going to close the borders to imports and put all the poor
people to work making goods that were formerly made by Chinese slave
labor, and you're going to pay them a middle-class wage to do this.
Where is the money going to come from?  Not vague arm-waving, show me
the numbers.
From the expansion of the middle-class.
--
Inquiring minds want to know while minds with a self-preservation
instinct are running screaming.
J. Clarke
2019-08-05 23:01:58 UTC
Permalink
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 05:35:21 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market
with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
So you're going to close the borders to imports and put all the poor
people to work making goods that were formerly made by Chinese slave
labor, and you're going to pay them a middle-class wage to do this.
Where is the money going to come from?  Not vague arm-waving, show me
the numbers.
From the expansion of the middle-class.
I don't see any numbers there.
Quadibloc
2019-08-05 18:54:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Where is the money going to come from? Not vague arm-waving, show me
the numbers.
Those people who already have jobs, the rich and those in the middle-class, would
now have to pay higher prices for new computers, new TV sets, or new radios.
Comparable to what they had to pay back in the 1950s or 1960s, but not quite as
high, since using integrated circuits instead of vacuum tubes would still provide
major cost savings, especially for computers.

Yes, it's still taking money from one group of people to give to another, even
if somewhat disguised.

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-08-05 23:02:30 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Where is the money going to come from? Not vague arm-waving, show me
the numbers.
Those people who already have jobs, the rich and those in the middle-class, would
now have to pay higher prices for new computers, new TV sets, or new radios.
Comparable to what they had to pay back in the 1950s or 1960s, but not quite as
high, since using integrated circuits instead of vacuum tubes would still provide
major cost savings, especially for computers.
Yes, it's still taking money from one group of people to give to another, even
if somewhat disguised.
I don't see any numbers.
Juho Julkunen
2019-08-05 12:47:45 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim, but how does making
Americans collectively poorer help?
--
Juho Julkunen
Dimensional Traveler
2019-08-05 17:19:49 UTC
Permalink
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim, but how does making
Americans collectively poorer help?
It helps make America great again by helping Trump become richer.
--
Inquiring minds want to know while minds with a self-preservation
instinct are running screaming.
Quadibloc
2019-08-05 18:57:42 UTC
Permalink
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim, but how does making
Americans collectively poorer help?
Improving the distribution of income, naturally, means the economy isn't quite
as productive as it would be if untrammelled laissez-faire capitalism, that
magical engine of productivitywere allowed free rein.

The people of Sweden, for example, seem to survive despite this, and I don't see
that what I propose will be any more disastrous for the United States than an
equivalent, if on the surface different, system had been for Sweden.

John Savard
Juho Julkunen
2019-08-06 01:37:41 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim, but how does making
Americans collectively poorer help?
Improving the distribution of income, naturally, means the economy isn't quite
as productive as it would be if untrammelled laissez-faire capitalism, that
magical engine of productivitywere allowed free rein.
'Improvement' is a loaded term.

I don't necessarily disagree with you on the subject, but it's still a
word that invites some definition or justification.
Post by Quadibloc
The people of Sweden, for example, seem to survive despite this, and I don't see
that what I propose will be any more disastrous for the United States than an
equivalent, if on the surface different, system had been for Sweden.
Sweden also isn't a protectionist would-be autarky. Why not employ
their methods rather than your strange roundabout scheme? Just because
you don't see how it could be disastrous doesn't necessarily mean all
that much.
--
Juho Julkunen
J. Clarke
2019-08-05 23:05:07 UTC
Permalink
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 15:47:45 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
Post by Juho Julkunen
but how does making
Americans collectively poorer help?
Tariffs don't necessarily make Americans collectively poorer. You're
assuming a zero-sum game. If tariffs move work back into the country
potentially they make Americans richer. However it is not clear that
that is what will actually happen.
Juho Julkunen
2019-08-06 01:24:43 UTC
Permalink
In article <***@4ax.com>, jclarke.873638
@gmail.com says...
Post by J. Clarke
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 15:47:45 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
A digital clock isn't. I'm just suggesting it is possible that Trump is
such a transcendent idiot that he is wrong about literally everything.
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Juho Julkunen
but how does making
Americans collectively poorer help?
Tariffs don't necessarily make Americans collectively poorer. You're
assuming a zero-sum game. If tariffs move work back into the country
potentially they make Americans richer. However it is not clear that
that is what will actually happen.
China and USA aren't the only countries things can be manufactured in,
there's plenty more places to get things made cheap. (Possibly after a
ramp up, but why make those investmens in USA rather than in some place
where labour is cheaper and regulations laxer?) Those jobs aren't
coming back.

In the meanwhile, Americans either get less goods, or pay more for
them.

And really, why would you even want those jobs back? It's not like USA
actually has a massive unemployment problem. Focus on better jobs.
--
Juho Julkunen
J. Clarke
2019-08-06 01:48:30 UTC
Permalink
On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 04:24:43 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
@gmail.com says...
Post by J. Clarke
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 15:47:45 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
A digital clock isn't. I'm just suggesting it is possible that Trump is
such a transcendent idiot that he is wrong about literally everything.
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Juho Julkunen
but how does making
Americans collectively poorer help?
Tariffs don't necessarily make Americans collectively poorer. You're
assuming a zero-sum game. If tariffs move work back into the country
potentially they make Americans richer. However it is not clear that
that is what will actually happen.
China and USA aren't the only countries things can be manufactured in,
there's plenty more places to get things made cheap. (Possibly after a
ramp up, but why make those investmens in USA rather than in some place
where labour is cheaper and regulations laxer?) Those jobs aren't
coming back.
So you're saying that if the US absolutely blocked all imports then we
would just do without goods that we know how to make?

The objective isn't chap goods, it's employed Americans.
Post by Juho Julkunen
In the meanwhile, Americans either get less goods, or pay more for
them.
Those who have the means to pay.
Post by Juho Julkunen
And really, why would you even want those jobs back? It's not like USA
actually has a massive unemployment problem. Focus on better jobs.
At the moment it doesn't, but a lot of the jobs aren't very good.
Assembly line work used to pay remarkably well.
Juho Julkunen
2019-08-06 12:29:59 UTC
Permalink
In article <***@4ax.com>, jclarke.873638
@gmail.com says...
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 04:24:43 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
@gmail.com says...
Post by J. Clarke
Tariffs don't necessarily make Americans collectively poorer. You're
assuming a zero-sum game. If tariffs move work back into the country
potentially they make Americans richer. However it is not clear that
that is what will actually happen.
China and USA aren't the only countries things can be manufactured in,
there's plenty more places to get things made cheap. (Possibly after a
ramp up, but why make those investmens in USA rather than in some place
where labour is cheaper and regulations laxer?) Those jobs aren't
coming back.
So you're saying
No.
Post by J. Clarke
that if the US absolutely blocked all imports then we
would just do without goods that we know how to make?
USA isn't going to cut themselves off of all international trade, and
if they did, it certainly wouldn't make them richer.

But the topic was started by John Savard, so it's not like it was
particularly rooted in reality to begin with, and this _is_
rec.arts.sf.written. Carry on.
--
Juho Julkunen
Scott Lurndal
2019-08-06 13:42:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 04:24:43 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by J. Clarke
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
A digital clock isn't. I'm just suggesting it is possible that Trump is
such a transcendent idiot that he is wrong about literally everything.
So you're saying that if the US absolutely blocked all imports then we
would just do without goods that we know how to make?
The objective isn't chap goods, it's employed Americans.
Yet the unemployment rate[*] is at historic lows.

[*] insofar as the current definition of "unemployed" as used for that
statistic allows, anyway.
Robert Carnegie
2019-08-06 08:43:40 UTC
Permalink
Post by Juho Julkunen
@gmail.com says...
Post by J. Clarke
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 15:47:45 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
A digital clock isn't. I'm just suggesting it is
possible that Trump is such a transcendent idiot
that he is wrong about literally everything.
I keep telling you that he's not as stupid as he seems.
What he /says/ is wrong, but I assume he doesn't believe
most of what he says. And he's /morally/ wrong, of course.
He pretends to be stupid; he pretends to be a racist,
to appeal to stupid racists who have a vote.
But actually he's moderately intelligent.
Alan Baker
2019-08-06 08:58:07 UTC
Permalink
Post by Robert Carnegie
Post by Juho Julkunen
@gmail.com says...
Post by J. Clarke
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 15:47:45 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
A digital clock isn't. I'm just suggesting it is
possible that Trump is such a transcendent idiot
that he is wrong about literally everything.
I keep telling you that he's not as stupid as he seems.
What he /says/ is wrong, but I assume he doesn't believe
most of what he says. And he's /morally/ wrong, of course.
He pretends to be stupid; he pretends to be a racist,
to appeal to stupid racists who have a vote.
But actually he's moderately intelligent.
No... ...he's really not.
Robert Carnegie
2019-08-06 09:11:43 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan Baker
Post by Robert Carnegie
Post by Juho Julkunen
@gmail.com says...
Post by J. Clarke
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 15:47:45 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
A digital clock isn't. I'm just suggesting it is
possible that Trump is such a transcendent idiot
that he is wrong about literally everything.
I keep telling you that he's not as stupid as he seems.
What he /says/ is wrong, but I assume he doesn't believe
most of what he says. And he's /morally/ wrong, of course.
He pretends to be stupid; he pretends to be a racist,
to appeal to stupid racists who have a vote.
But actually he's moderately intelligent.
No... ...he's really not.
Look, I'm not saying /highly/ intelligent.
But he's cunning, isn't he? That's intelligence.
f***@gmail.com
2019-08-06 09:55:24 UTC
Permalink
Greetings all

The saddest thing about people insisting that, despite Trump being dumber than bag of dull nails, is that he STILL BEAT their candidate. Whether you are a Republican or Democrat or whatever else people call themselves these days... Trump (or his campaign) beat everyone else. He might not have won an overall majority, but he got enough votes in the Electoral College to win.

Normally I would think that this was enough to embarrass people into shutting up about it and doing the necessary leg work to make sure Trump doesn't get elected next time.

YMMV.

Just in case you think this is some kind of Trump-supporting smugness, I'm not a US citizen. Over here the majority electorate has voted for four successive governments that each proven to be more corrupt and criminal than the one before. And considering WHO were got rid of in 1994, that's a pretty poor state of affairs.

Take care,

Regards
Frank
Scott Lurndal
2019-08-06 13:44:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Robert Carnegie
Post by Alan Baker
Post by Robert Carnegie
I keep telling you that he's not as stupid as he seems.
What he /says/ is wrong, but I assume he doesn't believe
most of what he says. And he's /morally/ wrong, of course.
He pretends to be stupid; he pretends to be a racist,
to appeal to stupid racists who have a vote.
But actually he's moderately intelligent.
No... ...he's really not.
Look, I'm not saying /highly/ intelligent.
But he's cunning, isn't he? That's intelligence.
No, he's to stupid to realize he's being manipulated by the Crazy Steve's.

(miller and bannon).

Scott Lurndal
2019-08-06 13:40:11 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Mon, 5 Aug 2019 15:47:45 +0300, Juho Julkunen
Post by Juho Julkunen
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
Are there goods and services that they can provide that can't
be provide cheaper by Chinese slave-labor?
There don't need to be. I propose to interfere in the free market with tariffs. Donald Trump isn't wrong about everything.
I think the jury is still out on the last claim,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. There has to be
_something_ he has right.
Bogus analogy noted.
David DeLaney
2019-08-04 13:50:32 UTC
Permalink
On 2019-08-04, Quadibloc <***@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

["how do we fix it?" -- what's this 'we' business, white man?, (tm) Tonto]
Post by Quadibloc
Well, I am looking at manipulating the economy so as to take poor people and
give them steady jobs instead of welfare cheques. That should help to make the
transformation possible.
I'm ... sure that, if you can contact Shawn Wilson, he can give you lots of
advice on constructing your economy-manipulating machine.

Dave, don't forget the maniacal laughter. if you do, the knobs don't get
connected correctly to the dials and the one Jacob's Ladder on the left

ps: people, please do NOT, for your own sakes, envision John making the
transformation, in full anime style, to Sailor Dollar, defender of the weak
American economy! IN THE NAME OF THE MINT!!1!
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
my gatekeeper archives are no longer accessible :( / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Quadibloc
2019-08-05 04:02:24 UTC
Permalink
Post by David DeLaney
I'm ... sure that, if you can contact Shawn Wilson, he can give you lots of
advice on constructing your economy-manipulating machine.
Nah, he's one of the mindless followers of Adam Smith, who created the problem.

John Savard
Kevrob
2019-08-05 04:34:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
I'm ... sure that, if you can contact Shawn Wilson, he can give you lots of
advice on constructing your economy-manipulating machine.
Nah, he's one of the mindless followers of Adam Smith, who created the problem.
Who are you following, C. H. Douglas?

Kevin R
Quadibloc
2019-08-05 19:00:58 UTC
Permalink
Post by Kevrob
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
I'm ... sure that, if you can contact Shawn Wilson, he can give you lots of
advice on constructing your economy-manipulating machine.
Nah, he's one of the mindless followers of Adam Smith, who created the problem.
Who are you following, C. H. Douglas?
The Social Credit movement wanted to just print money that wasn't backed by
gold, and use it as the only medium of exchange. They rationalized this by using
Marx' discredited labor theory of value as the basis.

I might implement my plan by printing a form of non-convertible scrip, but I
would know what I was doing, and keep that economy separate from the healthy
functioning convertible-currency economy enjoyed by existing exporters.

John Savard
Johnny1A
2019-08-04 06:55:40 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
I am aware that many black people in the United States are profoundly alienated
from the social mainstream. Thus, black children in school face enormous peer
pressures not to study hard, not to concentrate on achieving academically,
because many of them see doing so as knuckling under to the Man.
But how do we fix this?
A limping economy, one with jobs outsourced whenever possible and the country
flooded by cheap imports, is not one that sends the message to everyone that if
you're willing to work hard, there is remunerative honest work available to you.
Black people getting shot by police disproportionately - yes, but the extreme violence of drug gangs has led to the police having to adopt extremely cautious rules of engagement. This is another problem that isn't simple bigotry in action.
But the fix has to start with what we can control. We can't just tell the police to be heedless of their own safety, even as we do address specific egregious cases. Instead, we have to go to the root of the problem.
Why so many black criminals? Insufficient black opportunities for honest work.
If all the black people lived in the suburbs instead of in the slums, there
would be no problem. Not from a change in housing alone, of course, but if
everything else associated with that was also changed: that is, if the black
people were moved out of poverty into the middle class. It isn't rocket science
to think that poor people are more likely to steal things or turn to dealing
drugs.
When I was a kid, people talked about how black people suffered from
"prejudice". That then was just a euphemism for out-and-out hatred and bigotry.
But today, prejudice is what they're suffering from - every black person is
assumed to be likely to be... what an uncomfortably high fraction (though still
small) of black people are like, a dangerous violent criminal.
You can't fix that by arguing people into ignoring realities that impinge on
their own safety. You fix that by changing the reality. And the part you can fix
and control is not how black people react to their appalling circumstances, but
rather that they start out from being poor and desperate.
So how do you do that? Remove all poor children from their birth
families and place them with middle class families?
Hint--a poor person with money is not a middle class person, a poor
person with money is a poor person with money. What makes someone
middle class is the attitudes and skills and connections that allow
earning that income, not the income itself.
It's even worse than that.

The very character traits and habits that can enable the poor to survive being poor, the behaviors that are highly _functional_ in that respect, also often work to undercut ceasing to be poor.
m***@sky.com
2019-08-04 11:56:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by Johnny1A
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
I am aware that many black people in the United States are profoundly alienated
from the social mainstream. Thus, black children in school face enormous peer
pressures not to study hard, not to concentrate on achieving academically,
because many of them see doing so as knuckling under to the Man.
But how do we fix this?
A limping economy, one with jobs outsourced whenever possible and the country
flooded by cheap imports, is not one that sends the message to everyone that if
you're willing to work hard, there is remunerative honest work available to you.
Black people getting shot by police disproportionately - yes, but the extreme violence of drug gangs has led to the police having to adopt extremely cautious rules of engagement. This is another problem that isn't simple bigotry in action.
But the fix has to start with what we can control. We can't just tell the police to be heedless of their own safety, even as we do address specific egregious cases. Instead, we have to go to the root of the problem.
Why so many black criminals? Insufficient black opportunities for honest work.
If all the black people lived in the suburbs instead of in the slums, there
would be no problem. Not from a change in housing alone, of course, but if
everything else associated with that was also changed: that is, if the black
people were moved out of poverty into the middle class. It isn't rocket science
to think that poor people are more likely to steal things or turn to dealing
drugs.
When I was a kid, people talked about how black people suffered from
"prejudice". That then was just a euphemism for out-and-out hatred and bigotry.
But today, prejudice is what they're suffering from - every black person is
assumed to be likely to be... what an uncomfortably high fraction (though still
small) of black people are like, a dangerous violent criminal.
You can't fix that by arguing people into ignoring realities that impinge on
their own safety. You fix that by changing the reality. And the part you can fix
and control is not how black people react to their appalling circumstances, but
rather that they start out from being poor and desperate.
So how do you do that? Remove all poor children from their birth
families and place them with middle class families?
Hint--a poor person with money is not a middle class person, a poor
person with money is a poor person with money. What makes someone
middle class is the attitudes and skills and connections that allow
earning that income, not the income itself.
It's even worse than that.
The very character traits and habits that can enable the poor to survive being poor, the behaviors that are highly _functional_ in that respect, also often work to undercut ceasing to be poor.
Is this a day for believing that people have some sort of free will and some sort of responsibility for the way they use it, or a day for believing that people are helpless victims of circumstances? Because most days it seems to be the latter, but when we talk about the chances of somebody who escaped from a country where they didn't get an expensive first world education managing not only to survive but to contribute in a first world country it seems to be the former, and I'm having trouble keeping straight which days are which.

FWIW I can think of three different ethnic groups who got a reputation for living very frugally and had a tradition of revering education. Those ethnic groups seem to have done well enough not to care that much about stereotypes.
J. Clarke
2019-08-04 13:48:30 UTC
Permalink
Post by m***@sky.com
Post by Johnny1A
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
I am aware that many black people in the United States are profoundly alienated
from the social mainstream. Thus, black children in school face enormous peer
pressures not to study hard, not to concentrate on achieving academically,
because many of them see doing so as knuckling under to the Man.
But how do we fix this?
A limping economy, one with jobs outsourced whenever possible and the country
flooded by cheap imports, is not one that sends the message to everyone that if
you're willing to work hard, there is remunerative honest work available to you.
Black people getting shot by police disproportionately - yes, but the extreme violence of drug gangs has led to the police having to adopt extremely cautious rules of engagement. This is another problem that isn't simple bigotry in action.
But the fix has to start with what we can control. We can't just tell the police to be heedless of their own safety, even as we do address specific egregious cases. Instead, we have to go to the root of the problem.
Why so many black criminals? Insufficient black opportunities for honest work.
If all the black people lived in the suburbs instead of in the slums, there
would be no problem. Not from a change in housing alone, of course, but if
everything else associated with that was also changed: that is, if the black
people were moved out of poverty into the middle class. It isn't rocket science
to think that poor people are more likely to steal things or turn to dealing
drugs.
When I was a kid, people talked about how black people suffered from
"prejudice". That then was just a euphemism for out-and-out hatred and bigotry.
But today, prejudice is what they're suffering from - every black person is
assumed to be likely to be... what an uncomfortably high fraction (though still
small) of black people are like, a dangerous violent criminal.
You can't fix that by arguing people into ignoring realities that impinge on
their own safety. You fix that by changing the reality. And the part you can fix
and control is not how black people react to their appalling circumstances, but
rather that they start out from being poor and desperate.
So how do you do that? Remove all poor children from their birth
families and place them with middle class families?
Hint--a poor person with money is not a middle class person, a poor
person with money is a poor person with money. What makes someone
middle class is the attitudes and skills and connections that allow
earning that income, not the income itself.
It's even worse than that.
The very character traits and habits that can enable the poor to survive being poor, the behaviors that are highly _functional_ in that respect, also often work to undercut ceasing to be poor.
Is this a day for believing that people have some sort of free will and some sort of responsibility for the way they use it, or a day for believing that people are helpless victims of circumstances? Because most days it seems to be the latter, but when we talk about the chances of somebody who escaped from a country where they didn't get an expensive first world education managing not only to survive but to contribute in a first world country it seems to be the former, and I'm having trouble keeping straight which days are which.
We aren't talking about either of those. We are talking about people
born in a society into a counterproductive subculture that treats the
primary culture as an enemy and discourages assimilation into the
primary culture behaving according to the tenets of that subculture
with the result that they remain poor.
Post by m***@sky.com
FWIW I can think of three different ethnic groups who got a reputation for living very frugally and had a tradition of revering education. Those ethnic groups seem to have done well enough not to care that much about stereotypes.
Alan Baker
2019-08-04 07:27:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd be rather closer
to the truth, but there's even still some of that around. Most notably, it
seems, in killed-by-police ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted
to those two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made what I meant
clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and blatantly bar black people from
certain forms of employment.
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the problems if the
post-war economic boom was still going full blast when that happened. But
instead, shortly after the doors opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was much worse in
the past.
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Johnny1A
2019-08-05 07:34:32 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan Baker
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd be rather closer
to the truth, but there's even still some of that around. Most notably, it
seems, in killed-by-police ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted
to those two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made what I meant
clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and blatantly bar black people from
certain forms of employment.
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the problems if the
post-war economic boom was still going full blast when that happened. But
instead, shortly after the doors opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was much worse in
the past.
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
Complete and utter bullshit.
No, unfortunately it's true. There is a cultural stigma attached in certain quarters to precisely the habits and behaviors that can work to improve one's situation. Among some blacks it's called 'acting white', among some whites (and maybne others too) it's a stigma against taking a low-wage job, even though you're more likely to be hired for a better job if you're already employed. It takes many forms, but it's very (and unfortunately) real.
Alan Baker
2019-08-05 17:21:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by Johnny1A
Post by Alan Baker
On Fri, 2 Aug 2019 22:26:30 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd
be rather closer to the truth, but there's even still some of
that around. Most notably, it seems, in killed-by-police
ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted to those
two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made
what I meant clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and
blatantly bar black people from certain forms of employment.
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the
problems if the post-war economic boom was still going full
blast when that happened. But instead, shortly after the doors
opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was
much worse in the past.
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing
the things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in
a good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do
those things and so they fail. While there are those who will
discriminate, that isn't the whole story and pretending that it
is does nobody a service.
Complete and utter bullshit.
No, unfortunately it's true. There is a cultural stigma attached in
certain quarters to precisely the habits and behaviors that can work
to improve one's situation. Among some blacks it's called 'acting
white', among some whites (and maybne others too) it's a stigma
against taking a low-wage job, even though you're more likely to be
hired for a better job if you're already employed. It takes many
forms, but it's very (and unfortunately) real.
No. It's the bullshit dog-whistle racism of people who don't want to
understand that there are still real barriers to black people.
Mike Van Pelt
2019-08-05 23:37:05 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan Baker
No. It's the bullshit dog-whistle racism of people who don't want to
understand that there are still real barriers to black people.
If you keep hearing dog-whistles that no one else hears...

Maybe you're the dog.
--
Mike Van Pelt | "I don't advise it unless you're nuts."
mvp at calweb.com | -- Ray Wilkinson, after riding out Hurricane
KE6BVH | Ike on Surfside Beach in Galveston
Alan Baker
2019-08-06 02:07:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mike Van Pelt
Post by Alan Baker
No. It's the bullshit dog-whistle racism of people who don't want to
understand that there are still real barriers to black people.
If you keep hearing dog-whistles that no one else hears...
Maybe you're the dog.
Wow, Mike...

...you really didn't think that one through, did you?
J. Clarke
2019-08-06 01:51:58 UTC
Permalink
Post by Alan Baker
Post by Johnny1A
Post by Alan Baker
On Fri, 2 Aug 2019 22:26:30 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd
be rather closer to the truth, but there's even still some of
that around. Most notably, it seems, in killed-by-police
ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted to those
two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made
what I meant clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and
blatantly bar black people from certain forms of employment.
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the
problems if the post-war economic boom was still going full
blast when that happened. But instead, shortly after the doors
opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was
much worse in the past.
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing
the things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in
a good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do
those things and so they fail. While there are those who will
discriminate, that isn't the whole story and pretending that it
is does nobody a service.
Complete and utter bullshit.
No, unfortunately it's true. There is a cultural stigma attached in
certain quarters to precisely the habits and behaviors that can work
to improve one's situation. Among some blacks it's called 'acting
white', among some whites (and maybne others too) it's a stigma
against taking a low-wage job, even though you're more likely to be
hired for a better job if you're already employed. It takes many
forms, but it's very (and unfortunately) real.
No. It's the bullshit dog-whistle racism of people who don't want to
understand that there are still real barriers to black people.
Yes, Alan, there are real barriers. But some of them are of their own
making. That you are unaware of this suggests that everything you
know about black people you read in a book.
Alan Baker
2019-08-06 02:08:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
Post by Alan Baker
Post by Johnny1A
Post by Alan Baker
On Fri, 2 Aug 2019 22:26:30 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd
be rather closer to the truth, but there's even still some of
that around. Most notably, it seems, in killed-by-police
ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted to those
two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made
what I meant clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and
blatantly bar black people from certain forms of employment.
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the
problems if the post-war economic boom was still going full
blast when that happened. But instead, shortly after the doors
opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was
much worse in the past.
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing
the things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in
a good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do
those things and so they fail. While there are those who will
discriminate, that isn't the whole story and pretending that it
is does nobody a service.
Complete and utter bullshit.
No, unfortunately it's true. There is a cultural stigma attached in
certain quarters to precisely the habits and behaviors that can work
to improve one's situation. Among some blacks it's called 'acting
white', among some whites (and maybne others too) it's a stigma
against taking a low-wage job, even though you're more likely to be
hired for a better job if you're already employed. It takes many
forms, but it's very (and unfortunately) real.
No. It's the bullshit dog-whistle racism of people who don't want to
understand that there are still real barriers to black people.
Yes, Alan, there are real barriers. But some of them are of their own
making.
And the ones that AREN'T of their own making?

That you are unaware of this suggests that everything you
Post by J. Clarke
know about black people you read in a book.
Quadibloc
2019-08-05 19:06:35 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
What you're saying here is not without truth.

But while I won't echo liberals by just yelling that you're "blaming the victim"
I will say it isn't the whole truth.

Not all black people are like that, even today.

And those that are - they, or rather their ancestors, weren't always like that.
This isn't some genetic deficiency affecting the black mind. No. They were
_made_ that way - made that way by decades, by centuries, of white oppression.

I mean, that should be *obvious* from the very nature of the dysfunction you
describe.

What was made can be unmade. And rightly should the labor of unmaking a wicked
thing fall on those who made it.

Work to treat black peole with fairness and justice, including bringing to them
economic opportunity in addition to the formal end to legal discrimination, and,
though it may take time, the wounds will heal, and black people will adapt to
their new circumstance.

John Savard
Scott Lurndal
2019-08-05 19:35:35 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
What you're saying here is not without truth.
Acutally, it is. The use of the term "many" indicates that he's extrapolating
from a single experience without any evidence to support his statement. Blaming
the victim, indeed.
J. Clarke
2019-08-05 23:15:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by J. Clarke
You're making some assumptions. Many black people consider doing the
things that one needs to do in order to obtain and succeed in a
good-paying job to be "acting white". And so they never do those
things and so they fail. While there are those who will discriminate,
that isn't the whole story and pretending that it is does nobody a
service.
What you're saying here is not without truth.
But while I won't echo liberals by just yelling that you're "blaming the victim"
I will say it isn't the whole truth.
Not all black people are like that, even today.
That is true, see for example one Barack Hussein Obama. And also see
what people in the black community say about him. It isn't all
complimentary.
Post by Quadibloc
And those that are - they, or rather their ancestors, weren't always like that.
This isn't some genetic deficiency affecting the black mind. No. They were
_made_ that way - made that way by decades, by centuries, of white oppression.
I mean, that should be *obvious* from the very nature of the dysfunction you
describe.
What was made can be unmade. And rightly should the labor of unmaking a wicked
thing fall on those who made it.
Fine, tell us how. Have you ever had a black man say to you
"assimilation" in tones that suggested that if you want to press that
topic you will be doing it from a hospital bed? That is what you are
up against. I personally don't understand why being prevented from
learning leads to an attitude that learning is bad.
Post by Quadibloc
Work to treat black peole with fairness and justice, including bringing to them
economic opportunity in addition to the formal end to legal discrimination, and,
though it may take time, the wounds will heal, and black people will adapt to
their new circumstance.
They don't _want_ to adapt to their new circumstance. That's the part
you don't get.
Post by Quadibloc
John Savard
h***@gmail.com
2019-08-03 14:55:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by David DeLaney
If you'd written "the kind of obvious discrimination", you'd be rather closer
to the truth, but there's even still some of that around. Most notably, it
seems, in killed-by-police ratios and imprisonment ratios, but not restricted
to those two situations.
Perhaps "the kind of obvious discrimination" would have made what I meant
clearer. It is no longer possible to openly and blatantly bar black people from
certain forms of employment.
No, you just don't call them to arrange an interview or call them back after the interview because "they weren't a good cultural fit for the organisation"
Post by Quadibloc
Which would have gone a long way to fixing the rest of the problems if the
post-war economic boom was still going full blast when that happened. But
instead, shortly after the doors opened, there wasn't much left behind them.
I'm not claiming the situation is perfect now, just that it was much worse in
the past.
David Johnston
2019-08-01 06:40:38 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
Yes. But it would be difficult to uninvent 60 years of technology and
destroy the industrial base of the entire eastern hemisphere.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
2019-08-01 18:24:52 UTC
Permalink
On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 00:40:38 -0600, David Johnston
Post by David Johnston
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 20:14:09 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dimensional Traveler
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
I think its less that they are disconnected from reality and more that
they don't like current reality and want to roll the calendar back to
the way they want to think things used to be.
You mean back when decent jobs were fairly easy to find and there was
work for people with no skills?
Yes. But it would be difficult to uninvent 60 years of technology and
destroy the industrial base of the entire eastern hemisphere.
Current political leaders: "Hold my beer"
Climate change: "Fuck your beer"

Cheers - Jaimie
--
Cartography:
The fine art of loading cars into ballistas and flinging them into walls
-- http://www.bunny-comic.com/586.html
Titus G
2019-08-01 02:51:55 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure. And now that Trump has said that black America
loves it when he says things like that... first vicious personal insults because
someone has dared to be critical of him, now a complete disconnect from reality.
He's been disconnected from reality for a *long* time.
Unfortunately, so has his base.
Why bother with comics?
His son-in-law owns slum apartment buildings in Baltimore that are
subject to frequent complaint and city fines.
Quadibloc
2019-08-01 06:29:03 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Dorothy J Heydt
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we
can't say the same for President Trump.
Ulsio?
/googles
Oh. Burroughs. A point to you for obscurity.
Ah. Sorry about that. Hopefully the other part - the association between rats
and Baltimore - was not obscure.
And so I was sort of expecting that the context would make the meaning obvious -
even if someone had never read Burroughs' Barsoom stories, given Trump's remarks
about Baltimore, that an ulsio would have been a Martian rat from some science-
fiction work set on Mars would have been, I had hoped, obvious.

John Savard
Sjouke Burry
2019-07-31 21:13:42 UTC
Permalink
Post by Quadibloc
Post by a***@yahoo.com
So it's sort of like Baltimore?
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for President Trump.
John Savard
The orange cat covering his head must be real......
Quadibloc
2019-07-31 23:47:07 UTC
Permalink
Post by Sjouke Burry
Post by Quadibloc
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for President Trump.
The orange cat covering his head must be real......
But is it a flat cat?

John Savard
J. Clarke
2019-08-01 00:23:24 UTC
Permalink
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 16:47:07 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Sjouke Burry
Post by Quadibloc
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for President Trump.
The orange cat covering his head must be real......
But is it a flat cat?
It wasn't before the truck ran over it.
Titus G
2019-08-01 02:57:08 UTC
Permalink
Post by J. Clarke
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 16:47:07 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
Post by Quadibloc
Post by Sjouke Burry
Post by Quadibloc
It is believed the ulsio is only a fictional creature. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for President Trump.
The orange cat covering his head must be real......
But is it a flat cat?
It wasn't before the truck ran over it.
In British cartoons, Boris Johnson's face/head is represented by a pair
of pink buttocks wearing a white fluffy and furry toilet seat cover.
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