Arthur C Clarke's Idea of How to FIX Global Warming: The book called "Sunstorm" is science fiction about how we defend ourselves from an extreme period of sunspot activity. In this story, scientists build a giant parasol to shade the Earth from the incoming rays... Like an umbrella, but designed to keep a person cool...
They erect a lens in space that directs the rays away from the Earth and into space... The lens could be very thin glass that is scored on one side to make a "Fresnel" lens to focus the heat elsewhere... As anyone knows, it is cooler in the shade than it direct sunlight, so why not just create a shady Earth ? Yes, the shade would have to be thousands of MILES in diameter but he explains how to do it. A worthy space construction project... It would take decades to build but we HAVE the time and the technology already. In the story, astronauts melt sand on the moon to make the glass. The advantage of the 1/6 gravity makes lifting tons of payload easier.
Quite a fantastic idea but... The communications satellite was just as fantastic when he proposed that... Now, it's common...
and now for something completely different: Zen Tales:
written by Tom Robbins in the book "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas"
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In the eighth century there lived Joshu, a great patriarch of Zen. One day a monk asked the Master Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?" Joshu replied "Wu".
In the Chineese language the word "Wu" is a negative response... like "No" in the English language. However, the word has many shades of meaning depending on the inflection and subtle nuances in pronounciation. Wu could mean 'absolutely not', 'probably not', 'possibly not' or 'I am inclined to doubt it'... So, for twelve hundred years, Zen scholars have debated EXACTLY what did Joshu mean when he said "Wu". For twelve hundred years they argued and argued. However, there has recently been discovered an ancient manuscript that show that there was a spelling error when the scribes copied the original text. When asked about the possibility of a dog having the Buddha-nature, the Master actually replied... "Wuf"... or as English dogs say, "Woof"... "Woof, woof, woof, woof, ooooooOOWWWwwwwwww"
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