Slashdot Mirror

Well, I guess people agree with you that citing two experts in the field on child development and violent media and games is "trolling" in the context of a discussion on banning violent video games (people who outline a nuanced view if anyone bothered to look at the book). The link again:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

The "dilemma" in the title is the conflict between helping kids work through developmental issues about violence vs. sending a message about violence being undesirable. I wrote a review of that book here with the key points:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
"""
From the table of contents, here is the list of topics in their "Guidelines for Resolving the War Play Dilemma" (each topic has a few pages of explanation and suggestions):
* Guideline 1: Limit Children's Exposure to Violence
* Guideline 2: Help Children Engage in Creative and Meaningful Dramatic Play
* Guideline 3: Learn as Much as You Can [about the media scenes kids view]
* Guideline 4: In Children's War Play, Address the Issues
* Guideline 5: Work to Counteract the Lessons About Violence and Stereotyping
* Guideline 6: Make Keeping the Play Safe You Highest Priority
* Guideline 7: Limit the Use of Highly Structured Violent Toys
* Guideline 8: Work to Counteract Highly Stereotyped and Limiting Gender Roles
* Guideline 9: Create an Ongoing Dialog Between Educators and Parents
In my own life, I grew up being taught in public school that I lived in a modern day Athens. As I've grow older, and paid more attention to politics and where taxes go, it feels more to me more like I live in a modern day Sparta. :-( Here is a long list of where many of our tax dollars have gone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_history_events
I was surprised to learn how long that list is, regardless of how one feels about the value of any specific event.
I've come to agree with the late Major General Smedley D. Butler (USMC Retired), based on his decades of combat experience, that "War is a Racket":
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"""

Whatever you think of the rest of what I wrote, please look into the issue of vitamin D deficiency I mentioned, both for yourself and to help your family or friends or neighbors:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/

Most slashdotters probably suffer from vitamin D deficiency, and it might help explain some of the increasing hostility and problematical posts here with people spending so much time indoors using computers, whether they are playing violent games or not:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/

But it is not just mental things; vitamin D deficiency can also contribute to joint pain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, tooth decay,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
"""
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:
1. Freedom of speech and expression
2. Freedom of religion
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear
"""

Freedom from want includes things like redistribution, but also socially-directed investment to create health and material abundance for all. Freedom from fear includes things like reducing violence in a society. In this case, the chose method of banning the games to free people from fear and want can be seen as conflicting with freedom of speech and expression.

I think taxing the games would have been a more sensible approach to the externality created by violent media:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
and either redistributing the tax revenue equally to everyone, or using it to combat violence somehow and promote the creation of more pro-social media.

A tax on violent media is kind of like saying people could shout "fire" in a crowded theater, but if they do it as a prank and it makes trouble for everyone, they are going to pay a serious fine to reimburse everyone for the trouble they cause.

Still, it is hard to say how much different games (violent or not) really harm society. A worse general problem is that people spending too much time indoors playing any sort of game (or even reading books) become vitamin D deficient.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
So, should all games and books have a tax on them for that?

And, children do need to work through issues of violence, even as they also need to be told that violence (and other aggression) is anti-social, which creates a dilemma (discussed in this book, which recommends reducing exposure to violent media, but not banning it):
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

I wrote a review of that book here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
"""
From the table of contents, here is the list of topics in their "Guidelines for Resolving the War Play Dilemma" (each topic has a few pages of explanation and suggestions):
* Guideline 1: Limit Children's Exposure to Violence
* Guideline 2: Help Children Engage in Creative and Meaningful Dramatic Play
* Guideline 3: Learn as Much as You Can [about the media scenes kids view]
* Guideline 4: In Children's War Play, Address the Issues
* Guideline 5: Work to Counteract the Lessons About Violence and Stereotyping
* Guideline 6: Make Keeping the Play Safe You Highest Priority
* Guideline 7: Limit the Use of Highly Structured Violent Toys
* Guideline 8: Work to Counteract Highly Stereotyped and Limiting Gender Roles
* Guideline 9: Create an Ongoing Dialog Between Educators and Parents
"""

On the broader topic of freedom, consider:
"Libertarianism: Marxism of the Right"
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"""
The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simp

Thanks for the first hand report.

An alternative approach instead of censorship is to just put a heavy tax on certain media, because of the cost it may impose on society:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
"""
In economics, an externality or spillover of an economic transaction is an impact on a party that is not directly involved in the transaction. In such a case, prices do not reflect the full costs or benefits in production or consumption of a product or service. An advantageous impact is called an external benefit or positive externality, while a detrimental impact is called an external cost or negative externality. Producers and consumers in a market may either not bear all of the costs or not reap all of the benefits of the economic activity. For example, manufacturing that causes air pollution imposes costs on the whole society, while fire-proofing a home improves the fire safety of neighbors.
    In a competitive market, the existence of externalities would cause either too much or too little of the good to be produced or consumed in terms of overall costs and benefits to society. If there exist external costs such as pollution, the good will be overproduced by a competitive market, as the producer does not take into account the external costs when producing the good. If there are external benefits, such as in areas of education or public safety, too little of the good would be produced by private markets as producers and buyers do not take into account the external benefits to others. Here, overall cost and benefit to society is defined as the sum of the economic benefits and costs for all parties involved.
"""

Media that contributes to social violence, or which displaces time that could be spent on learning better solutions to social conflicts, could be considered as creating a negative externality. More on this general issue, about the dilemma between helping kids work through developmental needs to move beyond violence versus sending a message about avoiding violent solutions:
    http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

A violent media tax could be redistributed equally to everyone as a "basic income", or it could be used to fund other projects (including other media) that promote cooperation.
    http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
    http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm

Here is another first hand report on someone from the US heading to Venezuela and then heading back to the USA, realizing they would never fit in for a variety of reasons (even as they admired aspects of the changes there):
    http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110706_mcr_evolution.shtml

I see you recently learned about Google.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=google

and how to use html
http://www.amazon.com/HTTP-Definitive-Guide-David-Gourley/dp/1565925092/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267755885&sr=8-1

But not how to think or write rationally.

Gamesdon't have to use violence as a setting. Groups of people can cooperate to overcome natural disasters or other challenges. People building with Lego together does not have to be either violent or competitive to be fun. See Alfie Kohn's book:
    http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254

Non-violence even works better at the political level in a democracy: :-)
  http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html

I don't think censoring as a society is the answer. But censoring as a parent for age/development appropriate levels to create a nurturing environment for kids makes a lot of sense IHMO (up to some point).

Resources about non-violent cooperative games:
    http://www.familypastimes.com/
    http://www.amazon.com/Playfair-Everybodys-Guide-Noncompetitive-Play/dp/091516650X
    http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254

I don't think censoring as a society is the answer. But censoring as a parent for age/development appropriate levels to create a nurturing environment for kids makes a lot of sense IHMO (up to some point).

Resources about non-violent cooperative games:
    http://www.familypastimes.com/
    http://www.amazon.com/Playfair-Everybodys-Guide-Noncompetitive-Play/dp/091516650X
    http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254

Except those drives can send us places we don't want to go in the industrial age:
    "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
    http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Please see this book (and my other previous comment here):
    http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

I wrote a review of it here:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html

Other related books about general issues and about what has been done to girls via media (and poor nutrition):
    http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
    http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

And something every caregiver should know now that kids spend a lot of time indoors and have become vitamin D deficient:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

We got rid of broadcast TV long ago too (we do use DVDs like Mr. Rogers and nature videos, and selected YouTube).

While I don't recommend any screen media for younger kids if you can avoid it, this site is pretty good for age four:
    http://www.poissonrouge.com/

As is this:
    http://www.starfall.com/

For older ages, some good things are:
    http://www.learner.org/
    http://www.khanacademy.org/
    http://www.cosmolearning.com/

A caregiver needs to create a safe nurturing environment within a child's needs and abilities. You are doing the right thing.

Other useful links:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles
    http://www.motherstyles.com/

Please see this book (and my other previous comment here):
    http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

I wrote a review of it here:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html

Other related books about general issues and about what has been done to girls via media (and poor nutrition):
    http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
    http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

And something every caregiver should know now that kids spend a lot of time indoors and have become vitamin D deficient:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

We got rid of broadcast TV long ago too (we do use DVDs like Mr. Rogers and nature videos, and selected YouTube).

While I don't recommend any screen media for younger kids if you can avoid it, this site is pretty good for age four:
    http://www.poissonrouge.com/

As is this:
    http://www.starfall.com/

For older ages, some good things are:
    http://www.learner.org/
    http://www.khanacademy.org/
    http://www.cosmolearning.com/

A caregiver needs to create a safe nurturing environment within a child's needs and abilities. You are doing the right thing.

Other useful links:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles
    http://www.motherstyles.com/

Please see this book (and my other previous comment here):
    http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

I wrote a review of it here:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html

Other related books about general issues and about what has been done to girls via media (and poor nutrition):
    http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
    http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

And something every caregiver should know now that kids spend a lot of time indoors and have become vitamin D deficient:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

We got rid of broadcast TV long ago too (we do use DVDs like Mr. Rogers and nature videos, and selected YouTube).

While I don't recommend any screen media for younger kids if you can avoid it, this site is pretty good for age four:
    http://www.poissonrouge.com/

As is this:
    http://www.starfall.com/

For older ages, some good things are:
    http://www.learner.org/
    http://www.khanacademy.org/
    http://www.cosmolearning.com/

A caregiver needs to create a safe nurturing environment within a child's needs and abilities. You are doing the right thing.

Other useful links:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles
    http://www.motherstyles.com/

It's been said by Major General Smedly Butler that War is a Racket:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Well, another racket is the unhealthy alliance between toymakers and media makers, a racket that started with deregulation of children's media under the "family values" Reagan Administration. That racket has destroyed big chunks of healthy childhood for many young boys:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

One of the authors of that book suggests a similar unhealthy alliance has make a lot of money harming young girls as a racket, too:
"So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids"
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Also, an indirectly related book from the time just before the first September 11th (in Chile in 1973):
"How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic"
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Donald-Duck-Imperialist/dp/0884770230

With that said, I don't think banning is the answer. Money poured into alternatives and discussion is probably a better solution. Alfie Kohn's work is a good start for such discussion (beyond the above books):
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security."

Another related book to understand how it all went so wrong:
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Also, curing vitamin D deficiency that people get from staying indoors too much playing games or even just reading is probably more important:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Also, kids need to learn the irony that in a world full of fancy computers and advanced manufacturing (like depicted in many such violent games), fighting over land or oil is just ironically stupid, instead of using that technology to make the world work for everyone. The unrecognized irony is more deadly than those games.

It's been said by Major General Smedly Butler that War is a Racket:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Well, another racket is the unhealthy alliance between toymakers and media makers, a racket that started with deregulation of children's media under the "family values" Reagan Administration. That racket has destroyed big chunks of healthy childhood for many young boys:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

One of the authors of that book suggests a similar unhealthy alliance has make a lot of money harming young girls as a racket, too:
"So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids"
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Also, an indirectly related book from the time just before the first September 11th (in Chile in 1973):
"How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic"
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Donald-Duck-Imperialist/dp/0884770230

With that said, I don't think banning is the answer. Money poured into alternatives and discussion is probably a better solution. Alfie Kohn's work is a good start for such discussion (beyond the above books):
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security."

Another related book to understand how it all went so wrong:
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Also, curing vitamin D deficiency that people get from staying indoors too much playing games or even just reading is probably more important:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Also, kids need to learn the irony that in a world full of fancy computers and advanced manufacturing (like depicted in many such violent games), fighting over land or oil is just ironically stupid, instead of using that technology to make the world work for everyone. The unrecognized irony is more deadly than those games.

It's been said by Major General Smedly Butler that War is a Racket:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Well, another racket is the unhealthy alliance between toymakers and media makers, a racket that started with deregulation of children's media under the "family values" Reagan Administration. That racket has destroyed big chunks of healthy childhood for many young boys:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

One of the authors of that book suggests a similar unhealthy alliance has make a lot of money harming young girls as a racket, too:
"So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids"
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Also, an indirectly related book from the time just before the first September 11th (in Chile in 1973):
"How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic"
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Donald-Duck-Imperialist/dp/0884770230

With that said, I don't think banning is the answer. Money poured into alternatives and discussion is probably a better solution. Alfie Kohn's work is a good start for such discussion (beyond the above books):
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security."

Another related book to understand how it all went so wrong:
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Also, curing vitamin D deficiency that people get from staying indoors too much playing games or even just reading is probably more important:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Also, kids need to learn the irony that in a world full of fancy computers and advanced manufacturing (like depicted in many such violent games), fighting over land or oil is just ironically stupid, instead of using that technology to make the world work for everyone. The unrecognized irony is more deadly than those games.

It's been said by Major General Smedly Butler that War is a Racket:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Well, another racket is the unhealthy alliance between toymakers and media makers, a racket that started with deregulation of children's media under the "family values" Reagan Administration. That racket has destroyed big chunks of healthy childhood for many young boys:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

One of the authors of that book suggests a similar unhealthy alliance has make a lot of money harming young girls as a racket, too:
"So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids"
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Also, an indirectly related book from the time just before the first September 11th (in Chile in 1973):
"How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic"
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Donald-Duck-Imperialist/dp/0884770230

With that said, I don't think banning is the answer. Money poured into alternatives and discussion is probably a better solution. Alfie Kohn's work is a good start for such discussion (beyond the above books):
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security."

Another related book to understand how it all went so wrong:
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Also, curing vitamin D deficiency that people get from staying indoors too much playing games or even just reading is probably more important:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Also, kids need to learn the irony that in a world full of fancy computers and advanced manufacturing (like depicted in many such violent games), fighting over land or oil is just ironically stupid, instead of using that technology to make the world work for everyone. The unrecognized irony is more deadly than those games.

It's been said by Major General Smedly Butler that War is a Racket:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Well, another racket is the unhealthy alliance between toymakers and media makers, a racket that started with deregulation of children's media under the "family values" Reagan Administration. That racket has destroyed big chunks of healthy childhood for many young boys:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

One of the authors of that book suggests a similar unhealthy alliance has make a lot of money harming young girls as a racket, too:
"So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids"
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Also, an indirectly related book from the time just before the first September 11th (in Chile in 1973):
"How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic"
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Donald-Duck-Imperialist/dp/0884770230

With that said, I don't think banning is the answer. Money poured into alternatives and discussion is probably a better solution. Alfie Kohn's work is a good start for such discussion (beyond the above books):
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security."

Another related book to understand how it all went so wrong:
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Also, curing vitamin D deficiency that people get from staying indoors too much playing games or even just reading is probably more important:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

Also, kids need to learn the irony that in a world full of fancy computers and advanced manufacturing (like depicted in many such violent games), fighting over land or oil is just ironically stupid, instead of using that technology to make the world work for everyone. The unrecognized irony is more deadly than those games.

This is explained well in The Shack. This book speaks directly to the main challanges people have to understanding Christianity: Why does God let bad things happen? and What is God like? You are essentially asking the second question, though you may not realize it. If you are curious about how a Christian would answer your question, you should definitely read this book.

I actually quite enjoyed the novel...

Written Chinese has heaps of grammar. It's a language, after all. If you tried to use Chinese glyphs to write texts using French, German etc. grammar, it would end up like The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English...

A good choice for AP is this

The real trick was getting APs that would do 802.11n on both radios at the same time. Most APs are not able to do N on both radios. So we ended up using the Netgear DWNAP-350, a $300 AP but it does support lots of features including gigabit Ethernet, N on both frequencies at the same time, PoE...

The Netgear WNDR3700 can't?

According to a tentative theory mentioned in Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction, it's possible that the early Ancient Egyptians heard about the technology of "written languages", and then got their top scientists onto replicating the concept, in order to try to correct the economic and military disparity that would result from being illiterate in a literate world.

I'm not sure how well accepted this hypothesis is, but I find it an intriguing idea. It certainly fits in with the behaviour of nations today, as they scramble to try to replicate nuclear technology, say, or high quality Internet search engines.

There's an obvious contradiction here so the question arises: why?

Because people have always moved from the countryside to the cities.
The difference now is that cities have sewage and trash collection and
some vaccinated populations and so they are no longer engines for the
annihilation of entire cohorts of immigrants. In the pre-modern era in
the West, an incredibly high death rate coupled with regular, periodic
epidemics ensured that the population of cities turned over quite
rapidly and people's psychology was markedly different, especially as
it related to personal violence and civil rights. Basically, you were
ahead of the median if, after arriving in a city, you lasted 30 years.
This had profound effects on people's attitudes, not to mention their
economic development. Imagine how difficult it was to establish
long-lasting businesses and corporations if 10% of the staff randomly
died (ie, not just the ones near retirement) or were rendered infirm
every year, and every few years an epidemic killed 20-50% of the
population.

The net effect of this was that cities were an incredibly efficient
way of absorbing surplus population from the countryside and using it
up without requiring an expansion in the size of the city. Only in our
modern era have we created a situation where cities can grow at an
accelerated rate because of a merkedly reduced death rate. Now the
only limit to the size of cities appears to be the restrictions of the
transport infrastructure necessary to sustain such a dense population
in terms of food and water.

You seem to be asking why people move from the countryside to the
city? Well, "countryside" has a fixed surface area, and much of it,
especially in countries where the economics of ownership is weighted
very heavily to the top of the pyramid, is not owned by the
inhabitants but rented, and the extraction of the rent through direct
rentiership or through labour on cash crops or the creation of local
foodstuffs for commodity extraction is the paramount non-urban
socioeconomic behaviour. Thus, as well as a pull phenomenon from
cities, there is also a push phenomenon whereby people are literally
forced from the land into cities, oftentimes as a precursor for
emigration or asylum seeking.

I suggest you read about the history of Ireland in the 19th century. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World is as good a place as any to start, and it cleverly links together Ireland India, and China's economic fates, demonstrating how some countries managed to reindustrialise during the modern era while others sank into a funk for a century or so.

There's an explanation for why there are so many Irish-Americans in
the world outside Ireland, and it is linked to this push-pull
phenomenon coupled with the desire of landowners to clear land for
cash crop cultivation and to maximise rentiership. It's a pattern repeated time and again, from the earliest domus plantations of the absentee Roman landowners in North Africa and Gaul during the early first millenium CE to the vast pampas plantations of Argentina during the early modern era. And it's a pattern that forces massive migration of surplus populations from the countryside. Cities are the first magnet destination for the economically displaced... if they are a port then they become a gateway to an overseas destination.

According to http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing, S3 will cost you about $150/month per TB. OTOH, it appears that all data transfers into S3 are free until June 30th, 2010, after which transfer fees will be about $100/TB. So if you want to do it, do it now. Be prepared to spend to get your data back out, if you ever need it.

For comparison, this week I bought a 1TB USB 2.0 external HD for under $100, so a DIY RAID should save you money in the long run.

I do have to ask one question: Exactly how is a tape library more impractical than storing a RAID set in a safe deposit box?

On the bright side, you can get a half decent Palm Z22 for under $100 now. Load up Plucker and a bunch of books and websites sync'd via Sunrise-Desktop and you're set for a few weeks. Also with TCPMP you can play back music and movies. And it comes with a much better PIM than Android and maybe even iPhone.

Yes, I'm still holding out with my Palm T|X. Bluetooth tethering to a $10/mo. unlimited wap data plan, where I can access ssh, vnc, and much of the web with Opera Mini. Haven't found anything much better to upgrade to yet. Just wish Google Maps Mobile would update their PalmOS Garnet client :P

It can get a little pricey for huge datasets, but Amazon S3 now has an option where you can ship your data on a big set of disks directly to them, they will import everything into S3, and it will live there forever. The nice thing about S3 is unlike physical disks, it can grow essentially forever, and comes with retention and redundancy guarantees. And once your stuff is in S3, you can recycle the same disks to mail them more data.

It might not be the cheapest option, but with Amazon's AWS, you can snail mail them a copy of the drive with the data and they're store it in S3 storage buckets.

I don't think you can beat a bunch of conventional hard disks in a RAID5 for both cost-per-TB and backup/restore performance, not to mention medium-term data integrity. Might be able to make hooking up the drives more convenient with an eSATA mult-bay enclosure, but those are kinda expensive. But I bet your backup box already has some sort of hot-swap on it already, like: http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS

I assume you already compress your data, since scientific datasets tend to compress well. You might consider compressing to squashfs, since it will let you do transparent decompression later on so you can skip the restore step if you just need a handful of files.

Does this mean that eventually any talented kid who manages to figure out (AKA, reverse engineer) Clapton's or Lifeson's style and sound perfectly, would be in violation of a copyright?

I think that would automatically make Steve Morse's Major Impacts a copyright violator. Check out track one for Clapton and three for Lifeson. The album is a tribute to all of his influences.

You want the book, "Science Made Stupid" http://www.amazon.com/Science-Made-Stupid-Tom-Weller/dp/0395366461

Amazon's DMCA procedures are very deliberative. If you don't like youtube's enforcement policies, shop around! Host your file on S3, and post a video preview on youtube with a link to S3.

For example, Amazon's procedure requires an electronic or physical signature on the takedown notice and a statement made under _penalty of perjury_ that the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf. This won't slow down a legitimate owner or agent much, but it will give you and Amazon a basis to sue if the takedown notice doesn't come from an owner or authorized agent. (Personally, I suspect that a fair number of takedown notices are not coming from people who have been properly authorized. People claim copyright on all sorts of things that aren't theirs to claim at all -- even large publishing businesses who ought to know better.)

By lobbying in Washington it has a tight grip over US foreign policy.

That is only half true and you know it.

I thought I knew it. But now and after reading an insightful book I realized something different. These guys present a wide array of references to support their theory that the Israel lobby's effectiveness in the US is hurting both countries by stopping the US from using it's leverage on Israel and at the same time keep US aid flowing in. This hurts American strategic interests like the relations with Arab oil states and hurts Israeli interests in the long run by incitement of terrorism against Israeli and American interests. They refer to situations where the lobby's hard-line is even harder than the Israeli official position. They also successfully demonstrate that critics of Israel have a harder time in the US than in Israel itself, as the Israeli press is very aware and often critic of the government actions. They actually rely mostly on Israeli press articles and references throughout the whole book. The same cannot be said of the US. I totally recommend it.

Maybe Atlas Shrugged should be revised to include zombies. After all, there's precedent.

The exceptional PC game almost never slips away entirely.

The latest compatibility update for 32 and 64 Bit Win 7 had fixes for Half-Life. KOTOR.

Reader Rabbit. Carmen San Diego.

I kid you not.

You'll find Commander Keen on Steam, Fallout on Gog.com.

The PC gaming keyboard is still very much alive: Microsoft SideWinder X6 Keyboard [$36]

http://www.amazon.com/Remix-Making-Commerce-Thrive-Economy/dp/B0029LHWFY/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1#reader_B0029LHWFY

Click on copyright.

http://remix.lessig.org/remix.php

Creative Commons Version

The book will be available under a Creative Commons license from Bloomsbury Academic. Stay tuned for launch.

As I said before when it comes to him making money those evil copyright laws he so dislikes are perfectly acceptable.

Something like this? I haven't tried it, and the reviews look variable....but it fits what you were talking about (mostly). Frankly, since all the current consoles have usb connections, I don't see why some game vendors don't just start supporting usb mouse and keyboard for stuff....there's nothing technical in the way, that I know of.

The water comes back in the form of grain, to feed the starving masses here on earth. The grain is put into metal cases and launched downhill via magnetic catapult.
 
Send prisoners up, they mine the ice, grow the food and send it down. Very nice system for earth until the loonies revolt.

Perhaps you can point to them then.

I've read this one and this one and none of it shows that as clearly as you claim. In fact, they show the exact opposite. But hey, maybe they are anti-semites! Maybe everyone that criticizes Jews and Israel is an anti-semite! Maybe the whole world is!

Perhaps you can point to them then.

I've read this one and this one and none of it shows that as clearly as you claim. In fact, they show the exact opposite. But hey, maybe they are anti-semites! Maybe everyone that criticizes Jews and Israel is an anti-semite! Maybe the whole world is!

Or I can look at it, observe and analyze its methodology, check up on which "studies" it chooses to put into its "metastudy" cherry-picked study, and rightfully call it pure, refined nuclear weapons-grade bolognium.

Why use stats when unsubstantiated conjecture confirms personal prejudice so much more effectively?

Why merely use stats when you can lie with statistics?

I struggled through the article (I'm not a physicist although I studied lots of Physics 35 years ago), and realized I was able to understand it because I twice struggled through reading R. Buckminster Fuller's, "Synergetics" Vols I and II. His key point on systems practically begins with a tetrahedron http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s04/p0100.html#402.00 , but his description of close-packing atoms and molecules is pretty vivid.

(Anyone trying to visit the site above: Do not be discouraged. It is full of totally interesting concepts and well-worth the effort. It helps to have a reading method such as described in Mortimer Adler's, "How to read a Book", http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Touchstone-book/dp/0671212095 which is also worth the effort.)

Yeah well I used to think that too. But that's not what's happening really.

The Jewish community learned and excelled at playing the lobbying game. I suggest you pay a visit to the AIPAC site. You'll see the face of many familiar politicians there. According to these guys AIPAC can and will get the signatures of almost all congress representatives and senators on a piece of paper in 24 hours. On several occasions in the Clinton and Bush administrations, they both received letters signed by the large majority of both Houses against, for example, the arms sell to Saudi Arabia or a loosening up on Iran's sanctions. They will actively support candidates that are pro-Israel and they will support rivals of candidates that are critics of Israel. All this is done in a mostly legal way - like any other lobby group in Washington. But ask around and dig a little bit and you will soon realize that these guys and the mother of all lobbies.

The point is that the lobby's grip is so powerful that you can find more critics of Israel in Israel - and there are many - than in the US. Any American candidate that doesn't actively support Israel is starting way back in the race for funds than an AIPAC-supported Israel supporting candidate. This doesn't mean that this influence extends itself to the votes. From my understanding and the book linked above, Americans are not the staunch unconditional supporters of Israel that the media wants people to believe. Many Americans are in favor of cutting aid to Israel or at least use that leverage to press Israel into a peace process. But the lobby acts before the elections so, basically, they got the US by the balls. It's political suicide to not be an Israel supporter...

I'm not people here are really getting the implications of this, and why it's so wrong.

Essentially, what this decision means is that any photo/video/painting/rendition of any kind of anything designed by a human can be considered copyright infringement, if that "derivative work" is being used to make a profit. Any building design recent enough to be under copyright is just as applicable as this war memorial. (In reality, literally *everything* would be applicable, because the creator of a work gets copyright by default unless he gives it away. This could include even things as far-fetched as landscape design, or the way some average joe mowed his lawn. Or some fence a farmer built, or even a highway. But, to keep it simple, we'll stick with buildings.) There's millions of buildings throughout the world, for which I'm 100% certain if you checked, you'd find copyrights on the design not just by default, but in every sense of the term. That means that literally every movie, every photo, every drawing, every painting, every rendition whatsoever of any of these buildings that is used to make a profit without first getting permission or paying royalties for every single building contained in them is infringing every bit as much as the USPS is here. Think about it. That's insane.

Care to take a guess how many infringements there are in this item alone?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RA3ZBY?tag=freefocom05-20&camp=211493&creative=379997&linkCode=op1&creativeASIN=B000RA3ZBY&adid=15664KQ5AMV47KCTWZ7H&

This decision can't hold. The can of worms it would open is literally too massive to really comprehend.

your the one claiming god exists, it's up to you to prove his existence. that's how it works,

Wouldnt it get some odd glances if someone was walking towards a sheer cliff, and at his friends' warnings blithely dismissed them with a "YOURE claiming theres a cliff there, its up to YOU to prove its existence?" It really doesnt matter what that person thinks about the cliff; its there whether its proven to that person's satisfaction or not.

There are things that are by their very nature unproveable. God's existence or lack thereof cannot be proven or disproven through scientific experiment; the idea of "super-natural" is that it is "above " or outside of (super) nature, and trying to insist that natural science be used to prove the existence of something outside of nature is about as sensical as a 2 dimensional cartoon character insisting that there cannot be three dimensions because he cannot fathom it.

To steal an analogy from CS Lewis, your insistence that it's your opinion of God that matters is rather like a fly trying to decide whether or not he believes in the elephant in the room. It is not what you think of it that matters.

And on that note I think it is interesting that intelligent people supposedly interested in truth, while insisting that we produce evidence or reason or logical argument for the insistence of God, will all the while ignore a multitude of writings on this very topic by highly intelligent Christians with well-developed and well-defended arguments. One of the most common tactics I've seen by athiests with an axe to grind is to demand an explanation for one phenomenon claimed by Christianity, and when an adequate defense is given, the argument suddenly shifts to new ground. One rather begins to question the sincerity of the demands for explanation.

your the one claiming god exists, it's up to you to prove his existence. that's how it works,

Wouldnt it get some odd glances if someone was walking towards a sheer cliff, and at his friends' warnings blithely dismissed them with a "YOURE claiming theres a cliff there, its up to YOU to prove its existence?" It really doesnt matter what that person thinks about the cliff; its there whether its proven to that person's satisfaction or not.

There are things that are by their very nature unproveable. God's existence or lack thereof cannot be proven or disproven through scientific experiment; the idea of "super-natural" is that it is "above " or outside of (super) nature, and trying to insist that natural science be used to prove the existence of something outside of nature is about as sensical as a 2 dimensional cartoon character insisting that there cannot be three dimensions because he cannot fathom it.

To steal an analogy from CS Lewis, your insistence that it's your opinion of God that matters is rather like a fly trying to decide whether or not he believes in the elephant in the room. It is not what you think of it that matters.

And on that note I think it is interesting that intelligent people supposedly interested in truth, while insisting that we produce evidence or reason or logical argument for the insistence of God, will all the while ignore a multitude of writings on this very topic by highly intelligent Christians with well-developed and well-defended arguments. One of the most common tactics I've seen by athiests with an axe to grind is to demand an explanation for one phenomenon claimed by Christianity, and when an adequate defense is given, the argument suddenly shifts to new ground. One rather begins to question the sincerity of the demands for explanation.

Services? Revenus streams? These people have -nothing- to sell. If they did it would get stolen fast.

Actually I'm not sure that's true. In Mike Davis' Planet of Slums, he makes the case that one of the *worst* features of modern slums is that the very poor rent living space to the desperately poor at exorbitant rates. And the lower down you are, the more you pay for less.

Slums are hardly socialist utopias. People who live there are all being good little capitalists, hustling to stake out their position in the Ownership Society, and it's making the problem worse. Collective action would be a lot more efficient - but if you're at the bottom getting stepped on by even your neighbours, who are you going to trust?

Slums are good for people who don't live in them.

This is one of the single most insightful comments in this thread. New urban megaslums exist because the political structures in those countries have failed to establish a civil society that redistributes the income more fairly among its inhabitants to create situational stability, upward mobility, without too much downward mobility below a certain floor . It is not so much a failure of wealth creation as a failure of political will, or a product of a definite politial will to clear the countryside so as to establish monoculture agriculture to grow cash crops for export to rich countries and to enrich a select few. To compare the slums of Lagos to expensive moored boats in Sausalito, and to imply that all slums are generating a transformation where "the progress is from hick to metropolitan to cosmopolitan", as Brand does, is to insult the intelligence of all but the most criminally naive and deludedly optimistic.

One of the single best books published within the recent few years about the new megaslums is Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. He takes a little bit of a historical detour, illustrating that the phenomenon of urban megaslum is not unique to the late 20th century. There was a single example of amegaslum (that is, a place where 1m+ people subsisted on virtually no income for generations in the context of a markedly unequal society) and that was Dublin, Ireland, during the 19th century following the abolition of the Irish Parliament when the remote British Westminster Parliament basically deindustralised what had been one of the more advanced nations in Western Europe and left it subject to famines and depopulation. Anyway, Davis shows that during the late 19th century economists studied Dublin's inhabitants, wondering how it was that they managed to subsist on so little, and many of their arguments then echo those today from analysts across the political spectrum as they regard an increasingly slummy world where the City of Tomorrow is not made of gleaming postmodernist spies ala Dubai, but in fact is much smellier and grimier, and has no running water or sewage.

That literally billions of people precariously subsist in these cities today is a miracle. To imagine that they will survive the disruptions of the coming water and resource wars of the warming centuries is magnificently optimistic.

I'm copying here a blog post on Metafilter because it has some high-quality links, unlike the Brand/Kelly anti-thought drivel:

Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day A new book by Daryl Collins of Bankable Frontier Associates (first chapter of the book is available from PUP); Jonathan Morduch of NYU's Financial Access Initiative; Stuart Rutherford, author of The Poor and Their Money and founder of SafeSave; and Orlanda Ruthven of Impactt investigates the question of how over a billion people make ends meet on only $2 a day. "The authors report on the yearlong "financial diaries" of villagers and slum dwellers in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa--records that track penny by penny how specific households manage their money." The strategies adopted by the households of

I'm not a doomsday scenario advocate, all I'm saying is you are seriously underestimating the disruption this will cause.

You're looking at it from a traditional economist's standpoint, in which investors can simply spend their way out of the hole. Most of the global economy's growth for the last 100 years has been possible due to cheap energy, and without it, you rely on the other resources you pointed out - but they are all small-scale and locally-oriented. Mass production overseas will have to give out to local manufacturing again, which we should be preparing for NOW but aren't.

Our power grid relies mostly on coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric. Of these, only hydro is sustainable because we rely on petroleum power to obtain and refine coal, gas, and uranium. Electric-powered cars and trains are more efficient than the ones we're using now, but there will only be so much electricity to go around. Transferring demand to electricity will outpace the infrastructure we have to generate and deliver it.

There is plenty of money to invest in the technologies to get us through this bind, as you say, but that faces several problems. For one, none of these investors will be lining up to lose money on this stuff. If it's not profitable, it won't get built. Second is the growing debt problem which is leading us toward hyperinflation. Third is the lack of cheap petroleum to actually build these facilities - or do you think we'll have electric backhoes and cranes by 2020?

I recommend reading Jeff Rubin's Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller to understand why the traditional economic arguments are misleading. Also check out Kunstler's The Long Emergency and World Made By Hand, Campbell's The Coming Oil Crisis, and Sharon Astyk's Depeltion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front.

I'm not a doomsday scenario advocate, all I'm saying is you are seriously underestimating the disruption this will cause.

You're looking at it from a traditional economist's standpoint, in which investors can simply spend their way out of the hole. Most of the global economy's growth for the last 100 years has been possible due to cheap energy, and without it, you rely on the other resources you pointed out - but they are all small-scale and locally-oriented. Mass production overseas will have to give out to local manufacturing again, which we should be preparing for NOW but aren't.

Our power grid relies mostly on coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric. Of these, only hydro is sustainable because we rely on petroleum power to obtain and refine coal, gas, and uranium. Electric-powered cars and trains are more efficient than the ones we're using now, but there will only be so much electricity to go around. Transferring demand to electricity will outpace the infrastructure we have to generate and deliver it.

There is plenty of money to invest in the technologies to get us through this bind, as you say, but that faces several problems. For one, none of these investors will be lining up to lose money on this stuff. If it's not profitable, it won't get built. Second is the growing debt problem which is leading us toward hyperinflation. Third is the lack of cheap petroleum to actually build these facilities - or do you think we'll have electric backhoes and cranes by 2020?

I recommend reading Jeff Rubin's Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller to understand why the traditional economic arguments are misleading. Also check out Kunstler's The Long Emergency and World Made By Hand, Campbell's The Coming Oil Crisis, and Sharon Astyk's Depeltion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front.

I'm not a doomsday scenario advocate, all I'm saying is you are seriously underestimating the disruption this will cause.

You're looking at it from a traditional economist's standpoint, in which investors can simply spend their way out of the hole. Most of the global economy's growth for the last 100 years has been possible due to cheap energy, and without it, you rely on the other resources you pointed out - but they are all small-scale and locally-oriented. Mass production overseas will have to give out to local manufacturing again, which we should be preparing for NOW but aren't.

Our power grid relies mostly on coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric. Of these, only hydro is sustainable because we rely on petroleum power to obtain and refine coal, gas, and uranium. Electric-powered cars and trains are more efficient than the ones we're using now, but there will only be so much electricity to go around. Transferring demand to electricity will outpace the infrastructure we have to generate and deliver it.

There is plenty of money to invest in the technologies to get us through this bind, as you say, but that faces several problems. For one, none of these investors will be lining up to lose money on this stuff. If it's not profitable, it won't get built. Second is the growing debt problem which is leading us toward hyperinflation. Third is the lack of cheap petroleum to actually build these facilities - or do you think we'll have electric backhoes and cranes by 2020?

I recommend reading Jeff Rubin's Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller to understand why the traditional economic arguments are misleading. Also check out Kunstler's The Long Emergency and World Made By Hand, Campbell's The Coming Oil Crisis, and Sharon Astyk's Depeltion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front.

I'm not a doomsday scenario advocate, all I'm saying is you are seriously underestimating the disruption this will cause.

You're looking at it from a traditional economist's standpoint, in which investors can simply spend their way out of the hole. Most of the global economy's growth for the last 100 years has been possible due to cheap energy, and without it, you rely on the other resources you pointed out - but they are all small-scale and locally-oriented. Mass production overseas will have to give out to local manufacturing again, which we should be preparing for NOW but aren't.

Our power grid relies mostly on coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric. Of these, only hydro is sustainable because we rely on petroleum power to obtain and refine coal, gas, and uranium. Electric-powered cars and trains are more efficient than the ones we're using now, but there will only be so much electricity to go around. Transferring demand to electricity will outpace the infrastructure we have to generate and deliver it.

There is plenty of money to invest in the technologies to get us through this bind, as you say, but that faces several problems. For one, none of these investors will be lining up to lose money on this stuff. If it's not profitable, it won't get built. Second is the growing debt problem which is leading us toward hyperinflation. Third is the lack of cheap petroleum to actually build these facilities - or do you think we'll have electric backhoes and cranes by 2020?

I recommend reading Jeff Rubin's Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller to understand why the traditional economic arguments are misleading. Also check out Kunstler's The Long Emergency and World Made By Hand, Campbell's The Coming Oil Crisis, and Sharon Astyk's Depeltion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front.