Slashdot Mirror

But we can do all that. There are already floating farms, although clearly open ocean isn't going to be practical even if some oil platforms do come close to the required stability and environmental endurance. We can also recover deserts into arable land, and even the ancient Egyptian figured out large scale irrigation if there's a ready source of fresh water nearby. The sticking point isn't lack of ability, it's the fact that it's still experimental, so hugely expensive, and for de-desertification it can take a lot of time to work through all the stages necessary to turn sand into loam.

Freedom “to” vs. Freedom “from” -

https://www.open.edu/openlearn...

Good article, The problem is to an extremist "freedom" means the ability to spew whatever bile they like and shout "FREEZE PEACH" when ever someone criticises them or dares to point out the flaws in their argument, this is the favoured tactic of the so-called "alt-right", they don't want free and open discourse, they want their point of view to be the only accepted one. This is the kind of thing that is actually killing freedom of expression in western countries across the globe. If we lose the right to criticise, we've lost the right to express ourselves.

Freedom “to” vs. Freedom “from” -

https://www.open.edu/openlearn...

Running out of room isn't a good reason to go into space. If Earth's population doesn't stabilize on its own, we will have to send off truly massive numbers of people in very short order -- and we'd end up with the same problem we started with because people will just keep reproducing. Consider http://www.open.edu/openlearn/....

If Earth isn't enough, but humanity has enough space, it'll be because we went to space first and then found we had plenty of space to increase our population. Not because our population was so great that we had to escape from Earth. In other words, cause and effect are backwards here. Earth will be enough until we go elsewhere, and even after it'll have to do for most Earthlings. Abandoning Earth en masse is likely to ruin Earth (https://what-if.xkcd.com/7/)

There are other possible motivations. If humanity could set up some system of interstellar trade (unlikely though that may be), that could be a motivation for wanting a larger population than Earth can sustain, in a location distant from Earth. I've also heard the "not all eggs in one basket" motivation for the survival of the human species, which I'm less fond of (why would you want to hedge your bets on that one?). Etc.

The Open University is a distance-learning university in the UK. They used to broadcast material (not just lectures) overnight on BBC 2, but it seems they stopped this a few years ago. Shame.

Some of it might be here, or else that might be the new "general audience" stuff.

The OU website says "Virtual microscopes, interactive laboratories and online collaborations have taken the place of home experiment kits sent through the post, while late night TV programmes have been replaced by DVDs and online videos".

Source: http://www.open.edu

thanks for the link!

here is the U.S. link for those of us on this side of the pond.

again - great idea...appreciate the link (as i forward it to my brother who is currently in college!)

Regards, Ralph.