Alan Anderson wrote:
In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:


Particularly when the plants mutate the way the salmonella did in space,


There you go again, exaggerating. The bacteria didn't mutate. There
was no genetic difference between the cells that made the flight and the
cells that remained earthbound. The difference was in the way the
bacterial colonies developed; in the absence of gravity and associated
fluid shear forces, they formed "biofilms" which are much more resistant
to acids and leukocyte attack. The same super-salmonella colonies can
be created without microgravity by carefully controlling the fluid shear
effects even in normal gravity.


For starters, that was a joke, and I probably should have stuck a smiley
on it
But despite whether the things mutate in orbit or simply grow in a
different manner, if they become variable in form or effects from their
normal development on Earth as they grow, and that difference changes
how people are affected by contact with them, then you gave a problem on
your hands, as our medical science probably isn't ready to deal with
them in their changed form.


and the female biologist is chased around by a eight-foot-long horny
banana and forced to defend herself with a pointed stick.


Oh, you're back to being silly again. I wish there were some way to
tell *before* I take the time to treat your posts seriously.


Well, if you actually were to read a whole sentence or three before
replying you might know.
But that could take nearly thirty seconds, so you probably don't have
time for it.*
It's not like I'm cranking out "Moby Dick" here. :-)
Besides, some people actually liked my funny postings...back before I
said the Shuttle was a piece of crap from the economic and safety
aspects: http://www.zip.com.au/~psmith/HallOfFame.html
And rubbed everyone's noses in it by pointing out what I wrote about a
Shuttle breaking up on reentry back at the end of 2001:
"My personal nightmare scenario in this regard is having a shuttle start
it's re-entry...and around ten minutes later, all this stuff that looks
like chaff starts appearing on the radar scopes... and because it
happened during communications blackout, you
don't have a clue about what happened...unless you can find the scorched
remains of the flight data recorders - which are somewhere in a re-entry
footprint around a thousand miles long."
Here's the thread: http://tinyurl.com/2zmrok
Here's the chaff:
http://www.solcomhouse.com/Columbia_...d_by_radar.jpg
Here's the flight data recorder:
http://history.nasa.gov/columbia/Tro...hotos/OEX3.jpg
And here's the debris footprint:
http://history.nasa.gov/columbia/Tro...earchmaplg.jpg
Although they never found any of it, it started shedding parts over
California, around 1,000 miles away from where it ended up.
I hope I never see Nightmare Scenario #2 occur: one SRB igniting on
liftoff, and the other one not igniting.
That would be like seeing something resembling a volcanic eruption,
although like Columbia, the crew would at least have a mercifully fast
death, which is more than some of Challenger's crew probably did.
The scenario the Challenger investigation was concerned about was a SSME
catastrophically failing during its burn. They thought that was very
likely given enough launches.

*As an aside, I actually caught "Entertainment Tonight" a couple of days
back, and was downright amazed by it - a "news" broadcast with fifteen
second long commercials and ten second long stories.
You can tell which country has a serious problem with methamphetamines,
crack, and caffeine abuse.
Attention span has dropped to virtually zero.
Even Walter Winchell would have a hard time keeping up with reporting at
this speed. :-D
I suspect the war in Iraq isn't unpopular due to expense in national
treasure and lives, but rather that we've lost interest in it, like a TV
series that has run one-too-many seasons.
The ratings have dropped severely as the years go on, and even that
rumored "Iran: WW III" spin-off series doesn't look like it's got the
boffo biz potential of WW II.
I think they jumped the shark when they hung Saddam. Always keep the
villains possibly alive and plotting somewhere, just waiting for a
reappearance when you least expect it.
It worked for Lore and Ernst Stavro Blofeld; it would work here too.
Remember what a great plot twist it was when Napoleon got off Elba?
Wouldn't it be cool if Saddam had a _clone_, and that's the one they caught?
And it works for the good guys too.
Remember how the Romans and Sanhedrin weren't expecting Jesus to pull a
zombie move on them?
Now _that's_ a movie title: "Jesus Christ Has Risen From The
Grave"....then he goes Neo, and flies off into the sky.
And the Apostles become this super-religious Shaolin theological hit
team, traveling the world and doing weird Zen **** to people's minds,
like asking them why they are like a mustard seed that's lying among the
lilies of the field and that people are tossing rocks at.
But the audience knows the Big Guy is coming back in the sequel, and
then some major league ass-kicking is going to occur.
Get me Mel Gibson on the phone, pronto!
So we run with the concept. and make it relevant to today.
They go over to Reagan's grave....and guess what?
_The ****er's empty_!
You know why? Because he's pulled a Jean Grey, and now he's back as
"Dark Ronnie".
And we can even make him African-American in his new hip and urban avatar!
But he's internally conflicted, and can't figure out if he wants to stay
Republican...or become a Black Panther.
The thing writes itself.
Get me Stan Lee on the phone, pronto! :-D

Pat