Ecotopia 4 Sale

Matt Welch | February 24, 2005

Biosphere 2, that Omni-flavored Arizona science project from the 1980s, is now on the market.

Comments

sage|2.24.05 @ 6:15PM|#

I think the MPP could make great use of that baby. For that matter, so could I.

|2.24.05 @ 6:23PM|#

$5 someone uses it to film a reality tv show.

|2.24.05 @ 6:35PM|#

Maybe Paulie Shore and Steven Baldwin will buy it and make 'biosphere 2: the return' This time there could be like a murder inside the biosphere, and they've gotta figure it out, or maybe a ghost!

I was thinking, remember the reason commentor 'Dan,' the one who tended to be more of a conservative than libertarian, what ever happened to him? I miss him.

Warren|2.24.05 @ 6:43PM|#

HAHAHA! Omni-flavored!! Good one. Why don't they list it on ebay?

Man did this thing ever piss me off! All the fucking cash dumped into this third rate carnival sideshow. Real science is hard work. It's also tremendously exciting for say Nova's audience, but not for Survivor's. Today we are assaulted with Alan Alda dumping down science for the Survivor crowd on Scientific American Frontiers. The worst part is seeing the poor bastards who whore themselves out to him, reducing their cutting-edge life's work and passion to his kindergarten mentality, because they're so fucking hard up for funds and they need the publicity. I only hope the billionaire jackass that built this gold-plated turkey took such a bath on it he has to work for a living.

I've been hoping all my adult (and even adolescent) somebody would make a TV show that assumes it's audience is familiar with freshman math and science.

For the record, I also called BULLSHIT on cold fusion, Martian bacteria fossils, and Star Wa� I mean Strategic Defense Init� I mean Missile Defense Don't work, won't work, can't work.

Jeff|2.24.05 @ 6:46PM|#

Maybe Free State Project could buy it...

|2.24.05 @ 7:42PM|#

I mean Missile Defense Don't work, won't work, can't work.

As structured and envisioned- probably not.

That does not change the fact that the first country with effective space-based weaponry will dominate this planet...

Franklin Harris|2.24.05 @ 8:25PM|#

Omni-flavored. Of course, if that were literally true, it would have been more a pleasure dome than a biodome, given the ownership of the late Omni magazine.

|2.24.05 @ 9:46PM|#

"That does not change the fact that the first country with effective space-based weaponry will dominate this planet..."

Yikes... isn't the idea of countrys "dominating" others as maybe, kinda unlibertarian? Especially, from space?

I can already see the headlines... "The U.S. unhappy with trade negotiations with the Koreas; blasted all their freighters out of the water from orbit, yesterday."

|2.24.05 @ 10:34PM|#

I thought Biosphere was so cool back then! Especially the little mini-environments and the glass-and-trusses structure.

Jon: $5 someone uses it to film a reality tv show.

I think either Survivor: Biosphere 2 or The Real World: Biosphere 2 is almost inevitable.

Also, from one of the links: It was a collaboration between Ed Bass, a Fort Worth oil billionaire, and John Allen, a New Age visionary with a distinctly eclectic resume: onetime union organizer and protege of W.E.B. DuBois [small world!], Harvard MBA, metallurgist, world traveler and manager of a theater troupe at a New Mexico commune called Synergias Ranch. He sometimes went under the name "Johnny Dolphin."

That last was just an early career move, taking some ill-considered advice from his manager. Later he would regret it, and changed his name from "Johnny Dolphin" to "John Dolphin" to "John Dolphin Allencamp" and eventually back to "John Allen." Or am I thinking of someone else?

|2.25.05 @ 1:39AM|#

Can someone explain to me the whole "can't work" assertion about missile defense? As far as I can tell, opponents of missile defense describe countermeasures that can be taken against it and then claim SDI therefore "can't work". Using this logic, every piece of military technology ever invented "can't work". Weapons are invented, defenses are invented against those weapons, improvements are made to defeat the defenses, better defenses defeat the improvements, etc. It has always been so and shall always be so. Instead of making silly statements like "can't work", wouldn't it be better to say something like "needs to be improved"?

|2.25.05 @ 1:51AM|#

They don't want it to work.

|2.25.05 @ 2:52AM|#

"free state project could buy it"

yeah..we could, but i dont think all 7,000 of us would want to live in there.. especially when the other 13,000 show up.

|2.25.05 @ 3:26AM|#

Maybe a militia group will buy it. Even with the difficulties, it has to be easier to live there than, say, Montana.

That would make an even better reality show. Like survivor, but with guns and explosives. I would pay to see that.

|2.25.05 @ 9:50AM|#

Today we are assaulted with Alan Alda dumping down science for the Survivor crowd on Scientific American Frontiers.

God forbid someone tries to make science interesting and accessible to the common people.

|2.25.05 @ 10:35AM|#

anon - I gotta kinda agree with you on this one. I mean, I understand where Warren is coming from, but at least there's still science on normal TV.

R C Dean|2.25.05 @ 11:38AM|#

I mean Missile Defense Don't work, won't work, can't work.

We already have missile defense that works on theater missiles. It may not be 100%, but a system that knocks down some missiles is "working" in my book. So this claim has already been falsified.

If the claim is supposed to be that "strategic" missile defense don't, won't, can't, well, that is an argument that is guaranteed to be falsified at some point. It is a solvable problem - just because it hasn't been solved yet doesn't mean it will never be.

|2.25.05 @ 2:08PM|#

Humans will never fly. An aeroplane will never break the sound barrier. Missile defence will never work. We'll see.

|2.25.05 @ 4:57PM|#

What a missile defense does is force the other side into new delivery systems. Such as, the suicide backpack nuke. Ain't no way to defend that adequately. Have a bunch of back-pack nukers put ashore scattered along the coasts (including Canada and Mexico). Steal some cars. 48 hours later, they are in position. Boom.

At least missles give you 20 minutes warning.

|2.26.05 @ 4:02AM|#

The "don't build missile defense because then they'll send nukes another way" argument is total bullshit. Don't bother having laws because people will find ways to break them. Don't have medical schools because new diseases will come along that don't respond to your old treatments. Don't build anything, because eventually it will break. Why don't we just all kill ourselves, and then we'd be assured nobody would try to hurt us.

|2.26.05 @ 1:02PM|#

At least missles give you 20 minutes warning.

Absent an effective defence, you have twenty minutes to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

|2.27.05 @ 6:59PM|#

Living near this monstrosity, I have to say that the Baldwin/Shore cinematic epic known as Biodome was as good as it got for the damn thing. Of course, I never tried to see either one.

I hope it becomes a reality show, but it will likely end up as a set for some crappy sci-fi movies starring William Shatner, a garden for some rich television chef, the place they put Martha after her next brush with the law, or an extension on a health resort (will it be Miraval or Canyon Ranch? depends on the massage facilities, I guess.)

|2.28.05 @ 11:43AM|#

Maybe they'll use it as for a set if they ever remake Silent Running. Which I'm sure they will someday. With Owen Wilson in the Bruce Dern role. (Only the villains will be big oil companies.)