🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <singtech-2306950242460001@ip-salem2-26.teleport.com>, singtech@teleport.com (C. Cagle) writes:

> In article <3rs6l4$2po@netnews.upenn.edu>, sterner@sel.hep.upenn.edu
> (Kevin Sterner) wrote:
> 
> 
> > Problem:  there is no volcanic activity on the moon, and if there were any,
> > there is no way that the rocks could be ejected with enough velocity to
> > escape the moon's gravitational pull.  Meteors do exist, and some of them
> > do originate from the moon, but vulcanism has nothing to do with it.  They
> > have to be knocked off the moon by a substantial impact.
> 
> Kevin, you missed the point.  The volcanic moon *was* an accepted
> 'scientific' theory at one point.  Untrue in light of today's knowledge
> but nevertheless accepted at the time.

I think you'd better read the original post again.  There is nothing
in the Swami's post to indicate anything but his belief that lunar
vulcanism is the source of meteors, and his belief that this is the
accepted explanation.

> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Kevin L. Sterner  |  U. Penn. High Energy Physics  |  Smash the welfare state!
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Don't you consider 2000 scientists living off of 250 million tax dollars a
> year for the past 40 years at PPPL a welfare state?  

No, as a matter of fact I do not.  The main problem with welfare statism 
is not the expense, or the burden it places on the resources of the
productive members of society, or the fact that it returns nothing to
the economy.  It is that it destroys the fabric of society by creating
a permanent underclass that is for the most part incapable of breaking 
the cycle of poverty.  Combine that with democracy, and you have the
perfect totalitarian state: the people voluntarily vote themselves into
poverty and oppression.  (This hardly describes the Princeton Plasma 
Physics Lab!)

If you want to continue this thread, another newsgroup might be a
better choice.  I suggest talk.politics.libertarian.

Oh, btw, plasma physics has essentially nothing to do with high energy
physics.  I wouldn't know a tokamak from a doughnut.

>They are not close to
> breakeven in fusion research and suspect it will be at least another 40 or
> 50 years if then.  

But it does have the potential for an economic return...something that
can rarely be demanded of scientific research, and can never be 
demanded of welfare statism.

>They are all WELFARE QUEENS IN WHITE COATS!  Get it?

Oh, I get it alright.  You have such contempt for the advancement of science
that you consider it to be a drain of resources rather than something
beneficial or even neutral.  I can't imagine an attitude more threatening
to the survival and happiness of mankind.

-- K.

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Kevin L. Sterner  |  U. Penn. High Energy Physics  |  Smash the welfare state!
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