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posted by martyb on Thursday November 23 2017, @02:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the live-streamed-or-live-steamed? dept.

"Mad" Mike Hughes plans to ascend to 1800 feet in a $20,000 steam-powered rocket.

He has flown in rockets before, mostly successfully, but was injured by the acceleration.

Despite that he claims "science is science fiction", he used documented engineering formulas because they are known to work, despite that the science behind them is bogus.

It will be live-streamed on Hughes' YouTube channel, possibly also on Pay-Per-View.


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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:17AM (10 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:17AM (#600488) Homepage

    Shaq is a master troll. He's as good at trolling as he is at playing street-ball. If he were president he'd basically be a Black Trump.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:57AM (9 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:57AM (#600509) Journal

    With a black rump...

    ....blump.

    BrShaq Oblump for Prez!

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:21AM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:21AM (#600515)

      But... butt... she's no woman.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:02AM (7 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:02AM (#600552) Journal

        Sex changes are possible today.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:58AM (5 children)

          by unauthorized (3776) on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:58AM (#600573)

          No they are not, and they never were. Your sex is "assigned" by your genetics and there is nothing you can do about it, short of perhaps developing a technique that could alter the genetic code of every single cell you have.

          I'm really sorry for everyone who is not happy with the gender they are, but they deserve to be told the truth, rather than an unrealistic pipe dream. There is a very good reason why most men act like men and most women act like women, and it's not "the Patriarchy" that's doing it.

          but muh gender-sex distinction

          What social constructivists call "gender" is actually manifestation of what real scientists call "gendered behavior", or behavior that is dictated by one's physical gender. Now of course I wouldn't say there are people on the sides of the bell curve, there is natural variation in all human behavior and this is consistent with the fact that gender is rooted in genetics. Arguing that gender is not biological some people don't exhibit typical gendered behavior is like arguing the survival instinct is not biological because some people kill themselves.

          There might be evolutionary reasons as to why some people behave uncharacteristically for their gender, or it might simply be an uncommon developmental quirk. It's hardly the most unusual form of abnormal behavior out there.

          but mah unusual chromosome configurations

          These are extremely rare conditions that have little to do with the so-called transgenderism because the overwhelming majority of people who seek to alter their gender do not suffer from such chromosomal abnormalities.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 23 2017, @06:47PM (2 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 23 2017, @06:47PM (#600761) Journal
            You do realize we're probably pretty close to being able to support pregnancies and such in female transexuals, such as by uterus/ovary transplants or even growing an artificial uterus organ for transplant.

            There are a few people out there with cells from a twin (or failed twin) of the opposite gender. Natural genetics is a weird thing [wikipedia.org]. And of course, organ transplants are often intersex. Thus, genetic code is not gender.

            Arguing that gender is not biological

            Biology is not genetics. The latter is only a part. We also need to consider that any human genetics contains the blueprints for both genders (aside from the small amount of stuff on the Y chromosome which isn't part of female DNA) and hence, everyone has those biological pathways not just people with the right chromosome combination.

            • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 24 2017, @06:03PM (1 child)

              by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 24 2017, @06:03PM (#601093) Journal

              It will be interesting to see if the advanced gene therapy of 50-100 years from now can completely replace the entire genome in every cell of the human body, including swapping in new sex chromosomes. This would probably illustrate your "biology is not (merely) genetics" point even further. In this scenario, you could walk around with the genetic code of any person in the world (or a new genome constructed by humans/computers) in 99.99% of your cells, but your body has already been built. Hormone replacement therapy results in gradual changes to the body. Perhaps a complete genome replacement would lead to more changes, but probably not that much more. The only way to truly get the results you are looking for would be to grow a replacement body and perform a brain/body transplant. Growing a clone for 20-something years takes too long and you have to deal with their brain (ethics!). Maybe there will be a way to grow large, adult-sized portions of the human body, sans brain, like we are doing with organs [smithsonianmag.com]. Including the skeleton, nerves, and vascular system (one reason why lab grown organs are currently puny). If DNA can't be programmed [livescience.com] to aggressively construct fully grown skin, limbs, bones, breasts, etc. in the correct proportions (allowing you to make a perfect doppelganger in the case of known persons), then the second best way could be to use a computer to simulate the resulting body shape from a genome and print large scaffolds that act as templates for cells. Whichever method works, you take all the pieces and put them together, preventing ugly scarring using salamander-style macrophages or another method. Then you simply have to remove the person's brain and connect it to the spinal cord of the new body (I assume that mind uploading does not work in this scenario). Piece of cake!

              All of that sounds rather expensive. You'll either need to be in the rich transgendered elite or have a utopia of unprecedented per-capita wealth to participate.

              --
              [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 24 2017, @07:26PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 24 2017, @07:26PM (#601117) Journal

                Growing a clone for 20-something years takes too long and you have to deal with their brain (ethics!).

                Not if they don't have a brain which isn't needed to grow the clone. That neatly sidesteps the problem.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @11:06PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @11:06PM (#600864)

            Totally O/T, but I have to agree.

            No matter the gear they're packing, they still act like their former sex, stereotypically speaking.

            I known a few transgendered folks, and all of them are still unhappy campers after their reassignment surgery.

            It's kind of sad to see their dreams not become real.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:19AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:19AM (#602452)

            There are universities that refuse to permit research in this area. There is also plenty of "research" that starts with the conclusion, rather like Rabbinical or Biblical or Koranic "research".

            Given that 45% of transgender people kill themselves, and surgery makes little difference, we really ought to look into causes more.

            The left wants to celebrate this condition, the religious right wants to condemn the condition, and meanwhile people are dying from a mental illness that is probably a birth defect. March of Dimes ought to be all over this.

            Industry really doesn't want any research, since hormone-disrupting chemicals may be at fault. At some development stages, it takes very little to screw things up in various ways. The easy but unethical (maybe?) experiment would be to expose pregnant women to various things on purpose.

            It could be mostly one thing, or a combination. Suspects include: viruses, plasticizers, fire retardants, soy, birth control (including water supply contamination), etc.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @07:10PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @07:10PM (#600775)

          Sex changes are possible today.
          > Good, I want a bigger one.