During a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Tuesday, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher managed to baffle and amaze when he asked about life on Mars.
[...] "You have indicated that Mars had a, was totally different thousands of years ago," the California congressman said, addressing a panel of space science experts.
"Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?".
[...] Kenneth Farley — NASA Mars 2020 rover project scientist — had to start off his answer by correcting Rohrabacher's question.
"So, the evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago, not thousands of years ago," Farley said.
[...] "Would you rule that out? That — see, there are some people — well, anyway," Rohrabacher said.
Farley answered: "I would say that is extremely unlikely."
Source: Mashable
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 22 2017, @09:10AM (5 children)
You have to recognize at least the honesty about his nitwitness.
Unlike so recently resigned political talking head, who was sure Hitler didn't use chemical weapons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @12:19PM (4 children)
Are we now calling Zyklon B pellets, dropped by hand through a hole in the roof of a "shower" building, a "weapon".
...or did you have something else in mind?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 22 2017, @12:45PM (2 children)
It also notes that many parties in the war had stock piles of chemical weapons, but didn't use them mostly due to the fear of retaliation in kind.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:28PM (1 child)
More, I suspect, because gas is a lousy weapon. Absent a static trench war like WW1, it's largely useless because you don't dare attack the area you just gassed. And the wind always threatens to change.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:44PM
Germany could have gotten a lot of mileage out of using mustard gas (or a mustard gas/nerve gas mix) in 1944 on the Eastern (Russian) Front (and later on the French. They were retreating everywhere on that front and hence, had relatively low risk of getting poisoned by their own weapons. Similarly, using chemical weapons in Italy and France would have been relatively low cost for them as they were retreating in those places as well. The problem would have been that it would have given the Allies a pretext to use chemical weapons on German cities, which is a thing that wasn't possible in the First World War. That would have greatly increased the mortality rate (of people Germany cared about) of the war.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 22 2017, @03:03PM
Letting aside Odessa 1941 (linked by others)
And why not? Anything that is used against an adversary or victim can be defined as a weapon.
Doesn't even need to be deadly: see the "weapon of sarcasm"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford