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Think about an isolated hunter gatherer society. They spend all of their time trying to survive.

Huh? Modern (e.g. 1950s) hunter-gatherers, living in lands unsuitable for agriculture, spent around 20 hours per week gathering food. How else would they have had time to develop art, culture & language while colonizing the globe? Agriculture was a huge step down, requiring ~100 hours a week until very recently. Quality of life suffered dramatically, but farming supports far greater populations, so it became dominate through military might (and drunkenness). Here, and here are some interesting articles on the topic.

It's probably more related to how hunter-gatherers led a pretty cushy lifestyle. Once someone develops farming, population densities increase dramatically, albeit at the cost of ~5 times more work (modern hunter-gatherers pushed into deserts spent ~10-20 hours/week gathering food, a farmer spends ~100 hours/week). A hunter-gatherer, OTOH, has less need for technology, and a lot fewer problems that need solving (permanent settlements, wars, transporting stockpiles, etc.).

>> In a few decades, native-born Americans will be about 25% of the U.S. population
>
> That seems like some sort of critical math failure.

You're right; I shouldn't have used the term "native-born" because the most natural interpretation of that would be "anyone born here," at any time under any circumstances. Parents come here on vacation, kid pops out, suddenly he's another "native-born" USian. He's legally entitled to birthright citizenship, of course (although absolute birthright citizenship isn't the norm in most developed countries). But that's not what I meant, though it's the most obvious interpretation of what I said.

Since I was talking about the negative consequences of the mass immigration begun in 1965, what I really meant in detail is, "In a few decades, the descendants of people who were already here before the mass immigration started by the 1965 Immigration Act will be about 25% of the U.S. population." The immigrants and their descendants will be about 75%. There's nothing special or "more American" about those people who were already here by around 1970 than anyone who immigrated here legally, attained citizenship, and integrated productively into the fabric of American society after that; we just need a baseline date to compare the pre-Act and post-Act population so we can assess its numerical impact. But certainly not all the immigrants and their descendants have integrated into the larger social fabric--some have, some haven't, and their presence has led to changes both good and bad; among the bad, some post-1970 immigrants and their children feel no connection with narratives of the Founding Fathers and the Enlightenment principles which shaped the Constitution; many take to the streets waving flags of their country of origin and advocating for even more open borders, for example; teaching the children of immigrants whose first language isn't English costs 1.65 times as much as teaching the children of native speakers (hello education meltdown); and some have very racist and tribalistic loyalties ("por la raza todo, fuera de la raza nada"); there are clear and sometimes arguably negative and divisive cultural differences in some immigrant communities even after having been in this country for decades.

At any rate, if we take the 1970 census data as our baseline, just 5 years after the new immigration begun by the 1965 act, we see exactly how big its effects were and continue to be:

http://www.flsuspop.org/images/population459.gif
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about/question-where-does-census-bureau-say-we.html
http://www.mnforsustain.org/united_states_population_growth_graph.htm

I'm not anti-immigration in general, I just object to the way the 1965 Act skews immigration toward unskilled Latin American immigrants and certain Asians to the exclusion of other groups, and how it's had a continuous unchecked growth. I just think instead of H1B and other special ad hoc programs, immigration should be reformed to shuffle skilled immigrants who want permanent residence and citizenship to the front of the line, regardless of national origin, and should have low ceilings built in for the time being. Americans are fond of recalling the mass immigration of the late 1800s/early 1900s when championing the current mass immigration; what they forget is that in the 1920s we stopped almost all immigration entirely for the next 40 years (until the 1965 Act) to give the country time to "digest" and assimilate these relative newcomers. I really think it's time to do something similar.

At any rate, that book I linked above, _Alien Nation_, makes some very valid arguments about the history of American immigration and since it's free I highly recommend it. I grew up in an almost ideally mult

I was wondering myself how many oil fueled electricity generation plants are in the United States. Using this source:

http://www.mnforsustain.org/windpower_schleede_cannot_replace_oil.htm

It appears less than 3% of US electric generation is from oil. The argument seems the be "its a start". But is it really a start? What is the environmental impact of Wind turbines? How much electricity from the #1 source of electric generation (aka: coal) is require to manufacture, transport, build, and maintain the wind turbines? How many wind turbines would it take to replace that 2%? What is the net energy gain over the course of the life of the turbine?

Nuclear is the only real answer, all of these purported "green" solutions are horribly inadequate. In fact, I'd call them deliberate distractions. I'd gather that the goal isnt to replace current electric generation means with green ones to meet current needs, but to drive down potential through deprivation of electric production resources.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9x7t8dGwa0&feature=related

I'm not sure how its "conspiracy theory" when the plan is literally in their own words? Pay attention around 2:30 seconds. Funny enough the only way to put the coal plants out of business is to simply bankrupt 75% of the US and drive the "masses" into life styles similar to sub Sahara Africa. How do you develop new "clean" technology without electricity? Where are these great new ideas going to come from? The magical government idea center while the hordes quiver in the candle light waiting for that great breakthrough???

The google is your friend.

Here's one from 1978. It's critical of Carter. It says he want's to do crazy things like shift away from oil to coal and nuclear.

Here's another. He foresaw the problem oil would become. He supported conservation and alternative energy. A frequent criticism of Carter is that he asked Americans to conserve - I'm still not sure I get that. He wanted to develop syngas. If anything he was ahead of his time, when oil prices went down again after the '79 energy crisis Carter's successor figured we wouldn't have to do anything, and that the status quo was just dandy.

Even with the dot-com bust (which incidentally pales in comparison to the housing bust) Clinton grew the economy more than anyone since JFK.

I like how you complain that Bush couldn't push an agenda because the GOP only had control of congress for 2 years (it's 4 and a half - i even gave you dates 1/20/01-6/6/01 and 2003-2007 - and it wasn't around 9/11) you blame Clinton's agenda for Bush's collapse, when the dems only actually controlled congress for two years ('93-'94). Blame Phil Gramm for Enron.

The CRA wasn't the problem. As I said 80% of subprime loans were issued by companies not bound by CRA regulations.

The real cost of the Iraq war is well into the trillions, and I'd rather spend that money on health care than nation building.

EMTALA is an unfunded mandate that says that the nurses who work in an ER, the hospital who runs the ER, and ER physicians like me have to pay for uninsured emergency care.

The Emergency Medical and Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals and emergency personnel to screen, treat and stabilize anyone who seeks emergency medical care regardless of income or immigration status. Under Emergency Medicaid, the federal government pays

Big, highly centralised power stations are expensive to construct (about 2 billion/reactor)

They're currently looking at 1.5 Billion, but oh well.

expensive to maintain (average $126 million per reactor per year)

Looks about right. Nuclear cost report I eyeball the chart on page 11 at around $120 per kw, or $120 million for a gigawatt plant.

Expensive compared to what? At 90% capacity factor and .05 per kwh, it'll sell $394 million of electricity. Enough to, in the first year, pay the $200 million of interest(@10%) for the loans to build the plant, and pay down the loan $68M.

Using a handy dandy student loan calculator(principals the same, I just used 'k' instead of 'm'), the loan would be paid off in 13 years and 10 months. If it ends up costing only 1.5B, we're down to 8 years and 3 months. 5 years 7 months quicker isn't bad.

have long construction lead times (10-12 years) and are expensive in fuel, particularly when waste disposal costs are factored in.

People figure that they have the construction lead times mostly solved. New plants are expected to take 5-6 years.

Refueling, about $40million for a gigawatt plant every 18-24 months, or .46 cents per kwh. It also says O&M at 1.26 cents per kwh. Totals, 1.72 cents per kwh, or 168 million for the year. Raises payoff to 21 yrs, 8 months. Still less than most houses. 11 years even for 1.5billion construction cost.

In the USA at least, nuclear plants have been paying uncle sam for years to take care of the waste, have ended up taking care of it themselves so far, and are still profitable.

In fully economically deregulated environments, nuclear power simply can't compete with other clean technologies. It may be suitable for a limited set of circumstances, but it's not a final answer that deserves trillions of dollars of commitment. We need to keep looking.

In fully economically deregulated environments, solar and wind would be slaughtered by nuclear.

Solar, even the more cost effective thermal designs: 11-13 cents a kwh. Hint: I pay less retail for my electricity. Common figures per watt of capacity is $6.
Wind: Even if it's only $1/watt, it gets slaughtered by capacity factor - some farms are as low as 7%, most average 30% - meaning a gigawatt of wind turbines will only generate a third of the energy a nuclear plant of the same maximum capacity would. That raises capital construction costs for an equivalent generation of power to $3 Billion, a billion more than the nuclear plant - That's an extra $100 million in interest the first year. Just killed the fuel savings over a nuclear plant, didn't it? And wind farms aren't free from O&M costs either. Good locations are limited - a wind farm takes up more space than a nuclear plant, probably even if you only consider the footprint of the towers.

Historically there isn't a lot of downtrend in U.S. oil consumption.

And Americans have way too short a memory to stop buying SUV's for long. Prius's no longer have a waiting list now that gas prices are normal.

There is no way of knowing for sure, but my bet / prediction is on a continued increase in consumption until pricing dictates otherwise, which will be because of declines in oil reserves or an increase in middle-easter chaos.

The movie file of his presentaton. And the indexed transcription

I think his reference to aliens refers to ppl not born here .

In reference to lower innovation, the visa workers sign Intellectual
Property statements that they lose all right to any good ideas
they come up with . So basically unless they are just feeling
giving they are better off sending encrypted e-mails of company
information back home via anonymous remailers with web-mail .

The funny thing on this is, the dumb local corporations don't
understand how their product was "instantly" reverse engineered in a foreign country with no R&D path , ROFL . Essentially their VAST greed just cut their own throats .

Visa workers are having a impact on innovation, because they
know they have no right to the idea, and can only hope for a
token raise for such work . Some ppl love their work and will
innovate anyways , but most ppl work so they can make a living .

In other words, we have alot of corporations that setup Visas, H1-B and L1 are just two common types .

To avoid the laws permitting only certain numbers new ones have
been made as well, though the L1 visa is unlimited anyways .

I used to work for a few major corporations during and after the
DOT COM boom, and the number of non-citizens is up EXTREMELY in the onshore work force .

When its more beneficial to ship it overseas they take that route .
Which should also should be banned, and yes it is protectionism, and yes other countries have protectionistic laws too .

The corporations decry that they have to hire Visa workers because
they cannot find ppl locally, but the real truth is that a Visa
worker often can be had for ALOT less salary wise, and fear
can be used to scare the visa worker to work HUGE amounts of unpaid overtime .

All the places I worked for during the DOT COM boom used these tactics to line their pockets with more cash .

A professor in California at UC berkley wrote a paper concerning
the Visa fraud, and how some of his citizen students who had good
grades, and good projects could not get jobs, but they students
with Visas with even LOWER performance had no trouble getting jobs .

The professor asked his citizen students if they had declined jobs due to pay and 90%+ said they could not even get an interview.

This is the degree of the situation, and it is discrimination . If you need more proof of the farce, I can provide .

The professor at UC berkley is Norman Mattloff, here are some of his sites :

http://www.mnforsustain.org/matloff_testimony_myth _of_labor_software_shortage.htm
http://www.vdare.com/pb/matloff_h1b.htm

Keep in mind, even after the DOT COM bust that congress passed
to double the # of H1-B's allowed per year into the country .

Basically for the purpose of greed , several 100,000 ppl are
laid off every year "effectively" to bring in cheap labor that
can be pressured with deportation back to a place they were eager
to leave in the first place .

Then citizens have their taxes raised so that we can "bribe" the foreign nations with foreign aid dollars instead of spending the money here .

This environment of fear and exploitation was OK'd by congress
98-1 back in 2000, so don't play partisan politics, both sides
SUCK on the issue because both sides are bought and paid for
with corporate cash .

Soft money from corporations now has more say in the way our government is run than the ppl . The constitution's quote of "For the ppl, by the ppl" is a farce .

The political parties pick their puppets, and the corporations dance their marionettes .

We just get to vote for one puppet or the other, with a facade of concern for the plight of the working man . They should all win oscars ...

Peace, Ex-MislTech

Not quite. Jimmy Carter did. That why he was run out of office when he ran for reelection, he was considered to be a "environmentalist wuss." I mean, how dare he ask America to conserve energy. Go to any big city in the nation and they will tell you that a lightbulb turned off is a lightbulb wasted (Houston in particular looks like day in the middle of night).

Or even before that if you believe Richard Duncan