The Big Picture: Science!

[Unesh52]

Yeah, neat episode there Bob. Glib, of course, but funny. I don't know; I'd be more into it, but I was expecting an expansion on your views about how science is portrayed in pop culture.

...maybe you want to write an article about that? I would read it. Just sayin.

 

[lralowicz]

Well... Jetpack is actually not a problem. Making pants that will last longer in a jet stream than saying: "Oh damn. My nuts are on fire" is a problem. Also... People have problems with 2 dimensional travelling (cars). And You want another one to the mixture?

 

[MB202]

Wow... This episode was AWFUL! Bob really came off as a big dick in this episode. I mean, there was some stuff in the middle, but most of it made me want to punch Bob for being so immature about these things.

not sure if trolling.....

FYI, I never troll. I think trolling is stupid and wrong,a nd I don't see any enjoyment in purposefully pissing people off. What I said there was what I meant, I really don't like this episode, because Bob's demands from science came off as really piffy.

Not that it matters, this show is LITERALLY about saying whatever he wants to say, so I can't really fault him here for saying what's on his mind. I just think it's really stupid.

 

[PunkRex]

Bob: I just wanna bang green chicks.

Me: And in the end, is that not what man has dreamt of since first he looked up at the stars?

BOB, IM ASKING YOU A QUESTION!?

 

[Gluzzbung]

Hate to say it, but the reason we're still on Earth is because any type of bacteria on another planet would kill everyone it touched, most likely.

no its not, not at all. think space suit. and then think about getting to those planets. and rethink what you just said.

So you think people would be able to construct a steller space station, on an alien planet, and keep it air tight so no bacteria could get in? That's unreasonable and what do you clean the space suit with? Even if it is possible, which I highly doubt to the degree of certainty, it would be completely uneconomical because of the amount you would need to take and how frequently you would need to take it.

you do know there a space station above us right now, where people live for years at a time, in space, where there is not atmosphere at all. i think you need to stop and do a bit of thinking.

And when was the last time the ISS clocked a profit? And where is the nearest inhabitable planet? Yeah, that's what I thought. Uneconomical. Also, people only live in the ISS for about 6 months at a time, because of a multitude of factors, namely muscle deteriorating, developing irregular bodily functions such as not being able to digest food properly and stress, along with a whole host of others.

 

[sanzo]

Where is that first jetpack image from? 0:32

I'm pretty sure it's from The Rocketeer, a movie where a guy gets a jetpack and has to keep it away from Nazis.
EDIT: I'm about 99.9% sure it's from The Rocketeer, looking at the IMDb page.

OT: But cultured meat would taste like despair. Oh I hope someone gets that reference.

Better Off Ted, Amirite?

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

Can we not just shoot glen beck into the sun? I mean come on what's the moon done to deserve that cock nozzle

 

[Unesh52]

Smaller brain = less intelligence.

I agree that at a certain point, a brain would be too small to house all of the necessary functional tools that precede intelligence. However, I get the impression that the broader implication here is that brain size is proportional to intelligence, which is very obviously false. For instance, a whale's brain is *[small]many times[/small] larger than a human's, but humans are certainly more intelligent than whales.

Were you just trying to say that a brain of such proportions that it would fit inside a very small bear's head would be unable to house all of the parts necessary to allow the bear to survive?

EDIT: I went back and looked it up. I don't think the brains are "many times" larger, but they are significantly larger.

 

[newguy77]

OT: But cultured meat would taste like despair. Oh I hope someone gets that reference.

Better Off Ted, Amirite?

Yeah buddy. Love that show. Too bad it died before its time.

 

[scdallav]

Ok, so probably someone else already said this, but whenever I click "more comments" I only get to see 2. PETA actually did contribute some funding for the development of cultured meat.

 

[Callate]

I'm pretty sure the answer to the all the questions is more or less the same:

Money.

Well, we do have jet packs, to a limited degree; it's just that they're wildly impractical, as we either end up using fuel that can only carry someone on limited flights for about fifteen minutes (I'm not looking up the exact specifics right now, feel free to correct me if someone feels the urge), or we, um, set the jet pack's user on fire. And while mankind may have always felt an urge to fly, I doubt we were really hoping to imitate a meteor in the act.

We can grow meat in a vat, but right now it's the most expensive meat on earth. It's cheaper, for now, to grow it in a field or feedlot; from the "starving person in Africa"'s point of view, it's way cheaper to eat rice and beans. And it doesn't put those associated with the feedlot and slaughterhouse out of work (I'll leave it an open question whether or not that's a good thing.)

Robert Heinlein once made the argument that the benefits of the R&D involved in the space program- in regards to its re-purposing for use on Earth- far outweighed the financial costs. I don't know if that's still the case, but it seems to have become harder to justify the space program in an era of cross-the-board cuts, and it's a damn shame.

What do you feed a guinea pig the size of a bear? How do you deal with the waste? How do you deal with the body when it inevitably dies in the relatively short life-span of a guinea pig?

 

[Daverson]

1. I'll level with you. It's an insurance thing. (Same with robot butlers, but for different reasons)

2. Let's compare cows to pandas, shall we? Cows are big, dumb and tasty, Pandas are big, dumb and not particularly tasty (If you squint, they both kind of look the same too!). Now, I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but I think there's several billion cows worldwide, whereas there's only about 5 or 6 pandas. You take being eaten away from cows, then what have they got? Making Milk? Any mammal can do that, even Pandas! (if we milked people, I think a lot more people would want to be farmers!)

3. Actually, there probably is oil on Mars. A lot of scientists speculate Mars used to harbour earth-like life, so unless someone else has already stolen it, there'll be oil. Of course, the energy cost of moving oil from Mars to Earth is much greater than the energy that could be provided by said oil...

4. Dogs are relatively easy to domestic and breed, bears on the other hand...

 

[Hagi]

On the cultured meat thing,

wouldn't that be about equal to pig genocide?

I mean if suddenly everyone starts buying cultured meat then all the money is going to go towards the cultured meat laboratories, not to the pig farms.

Those pig farms are going to run out of money and they're going to be unable to feed all those pigs. All those pigs is going to be slaughtered asap so the owners keep enough money to just survive. In a decade or so you're going to have to go to the zoo to see pigs, because for the vast majority of people there'd be absolutely no reason whatsoever to keep pigs around. And in a world where thousands of children die every year due to starvation the amount of people who're going to feed a pig out of charity is bound to be extremely low.

The effect on other farm animals may be lower, cows still give milk and sheep still give wool. But even for them their populations are going to drop if we switch to cultured meat.

In short, switching to cultured meat (or everyone going vegan) basically means the deaths of millions of farm animals....

 

[Unesh52]

Science was going to feed the world, and take us to space.... But then, Green Peace...

XD Ah... fucking Green Peace. I'm sure not everything they do is fiercely ignorant and counter productive.

But a lot of it is.

 

[Jesse Billingsley]

Hey science! Where is my Mad Cat? I want my Mad Cat! And a orange soda too.

 

[Togs]

I tried to find it funny, I really did.

Instead the guy who got a warning for saying "inane" give us our /thread.

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

I'm a bit confused now, could someone help me out here?
This episode was an ironic jab at all the people who have no idea what they're talking about demanding "science" (as if there's some sort of homogenous group of "scientists") to do completely uneconomic, wasteful and downright unreasonable things, yes? This wasn't actually serious, yes? Because I'm not too sure anymore.

I have no idea. None.
All I know is that I got increasingly annoyed throughout the episode.
Either this is a case of an epic failure in delivering a joke or, and I don´t mean for this to be offensive, Bob is.... not the brightest Lantern in the Corps.