None are needed. On the other hand if a bunch of geologists announced that based on their studies of plate tectonics that they could now project that a massive disaster was almost certain to befall Tokyo (why Tokyo? fool, don't you know Tokyo is always being trampled by Godzilla or fending off some other disaster?) and the only answer was to abandon the city and relocate everyone that would be a valid comparison.
How is that a valid comparision? Are you saying that global warming is a disaster waiting to befall oil? Are you saying that the existence of Tokyo is somehow precipitating said major disturbance in the Earth's crust?
From what I can tell you are comparing apples and oranges in the first, then going on to a value comparison that seems to be comparing the dollar with the survival of a population without whom the dollar loses all value within the area of interest.
You then continue with some strange notion that scientific proof is about democratic consensus or that a scientific theory that was born from observation of a natural phenomenon and later became a political movement is somehow less scientific due to the prejudices of the politicians who first noticed the phenomenon and voiced their concerns.
In a master stroke, you finish with a strange rant about how a political framework similar to some ideas advocated by Jesus Christ somehow has something to do with fashion, science and fucking turtles on camera for all I can make out.
So your point is what? That science cannot remain apolitical when donkeys like you insist on weighing into the debate? Oh right, yes, good, I see your point...... shame really.....
I'm going to vote in a state election tomorrow (Victoria Australia) and this week I received a few pieces of snail mail containing outright lies. Parties with similar policies lie about each other to try and win votes. In some areas they claim one set of policies, in others they switch, depending on who they're trying to impress. The same thing happens federally as well. You'd think that just publicity in the news media would expose this, but people seem too stupid to notice.
What safegaurds are there in this system stop such abuse? If it's not possible, I see no advantage to it.
I would prefer to see laws enacted where politicians who are shown to have gained office through deceit are put in stocks in public places and the people are charged 50c a piece of rotten fruit to throw at them. I know it's not sexy technological, but it would be much more satisfying, better for democracy in the long run and profitable.
If tribe members have to use a different language in order to use a computer, then those that decide to use computers may simply drop the language that the computer doesn't support.
1. Per capita, darling;-P. Yes they are expanding and CO2 emissions are increasing as is the case with India. Imagine a world where rich countries didn't just say "I won't do it unless the developing economies do it", but actually took some leadership and serious investment into developing the new technologies. Then we say to the Chinese, "hey, no need to reduce energy production, try doing it this way. How about we license the technology to you so that you can manufacture it for us?" I'm not saying that there is no research into clean energy, I'm saying there could be a lot more and developed economies would benefit enormously in the long term (ie longer than two terms as president of the US).
2. I'm not getting into a who's-read-what penis size competion with you, honey bunny. I live in the second largest CO2 producer per capita, and we have a long history of causing ecological problems that have led to economic problems by trying to manipulate natural systems to fix problems that we created by manipulating natural systems. In most cases, studies have made it look safe but things are very real in the real world.
You know that old song about the old woman who swallowed a fly and neglected to put her fingers down her throat? Sure, throwing up isn't pleasant, but it's not hard to clean up and I prefer it to creating a situation where my grand kids will have to eat a horse.
3. I don't believe we should halt all technological development out of fear just as I don't believe it's a good idea to use graphite to insulate nuclear reactor cores with super-heated water nearby. Where there is a safer option that can lead to greater technological development, I'll opt for that any day.
We already know how to make mirrors, angle them to re-direct light and steer orbital vehicles, so what's to learn? We're not very good at using ambient thermal energy in massively distributed networks to generate electrity. Imagine if the best solution to the problem was to leave the carbon in the atmosphere and use it to trap heat so that our power plants and appliances didn't create too much global cooling, that's a bit different and may present a new option 5.
I do believe that the risks of terrorism, mal-intent or accident from putting mirrors in space outweigh the benefits. I also believe that should any single nation do this, other nations could well consider it a threat. In the 1940s, the United States dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan, and then two days later, when Japan had already tried to surrender, the United States did it again. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States used agent orange to kill jungles and crops in Vietnam. In the 1990s and into this century, the United States has used white phosphorus, cluster munitions in civilian areas and depleted uranium on agricultural land. The United States continues to refuse to subject itself to penalty under international treaties on war crimes.
I know that most Americans who know about these actions are not proud of them and I really don't want to come across as anti-American, in fact I consider myself a friend of the United States. It's as a friend that I'm explaining why it is unlikely that many other people would trust the United States to have control over mirrors in space and why it would have a good chance of increasing the threat of terrorism towards the United States. I wonder how the United States would react if China put giant mirrors in space.
As for Al Gore's head, you may well be right. I suppose it would need to be big to store the brain that invented the internet, however I don't think it would remain intact in a vacuum.;-D
Sorry I got on your nerves. I'm not trying to irritate or offend, just put things from another perspective in an attempt to increase understanding and provoke thought as opposed to replaying thoughts. I also seriously believe that option 1 is technically the simplest and, somewhat counter-intuitively, will lead to greater advances in technology.
And so theStorminMoron used selective reasoning to deny human impact on climate change as the planet rapidly warmed. On and on he argued, as the ice that covered the vast land masses of Greenland and Antartica slid into the ocean, flooding cities, farmlands spaceports and server rooms around the globe.
God looked down from heaven, closed her eyes, bowed her head and whispered, "If only they weren't so busy trying to point the finger at everyone else and just took responsibility for their own fuck ups. What a waste. What a bunch of morons."
Okay, from an international point of view, or at least a view from outside the United States of America, let's whittle down the options.
1. Reduce CO2
2. Put dust in the stratosphere
3. Put large mirrors in orbit
4. Put Al Gore in orbit and use his head to shade the Earth (sorry, couldn't resist!)
1. Sounds feasible. So a bunch of dinosaurs who think you can't have a vibrant economy without digging crap up and burning it lose some money, so some fat, self centred and mildly psychopathic idiots aren't allowed to drive SUVs. Boo hoo.
2. How much dust? What effect will that have on direct radiation reaching the ground for crops? What are the consequences for the natural habitats, what extinctions will it cause and what will the flow on effects be? How long will it take for these effects to reach equilibrium and isn't it just easier to cause the extinction of the human dinosaurs who put money before survival and insist on digging crap up and burning it? Sheesh, you rocket scientists don't really think much beyond flinging shit into orbit, do you?
3. Consider the security implications of big mirrors in space. I assume there would be a remote way to steer them. I assert that it would be hackable. Also, see point 2, and in particular the part about dinosaurs. Points 2 and 3 are so dangerous that I would suggest preventing them at gun point would be a sensible option.
4. Again, this is from an wider standpoint than the United States of America, as is the issue. Your domestic politics are only of interest to the rest of the world when you vote in stupid violent dinosaurs as presidents, or allow your electoral system to be compromised to put said dinosaurs in government. Otherwise we really don't give a shit.
Given the above in depth analysis, we can narrow it down to two options:
1. Reduce CO2
2. Gunpoint
And in an effort to reach a consensus in good faith, and given your previously stated your opposition to guns and my personal distaste for forcing change at gun point, we are left with:
1. Reduce CO2
As I understand it, the texts of the OT were extremely contraversial. As they have survived, they are missing a lot of the original story. For example the only remaining reference to the Earth-Mother figure common in other tribal religions is in the story of Cain and Abel. If you realize that the stories of the OT started as tribal stories in North Africa and look at the other surviving tribal religions in the area, which are extremely similar to the OT, you'll start to get an idea of how much was axed. There's a book called "Folk Law of the Old Testament" which is an interesting read on this subject, but only if you aren't one of those "the bible is literal truth" guys. Sorry I can't remember the author right now, but Amazon may be worth a try.
3. The criteria for seclecting NT texts were roughly: written by an apostle or close to one, accepted by the church at large, consistent with other known books, reflecting the kind of moral values that would be expected of something inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Ummmm, I call bullshit here. As you said, a lot of the NT was done largely under the Byzantine empire, where people with power and money had the means to oppress and even eliminate people who stood in the way of their interests.
Religion was used not only as a way to keep the people who need fairy stories to maintain morality in line spiritually, but also socially. The very fact that the Catholic commandments prohibits stealing, without qualification, is testament to this. Are you saying the Holy Spirit forbids people from stealing just enough food to feed their starving family? Honestly, how much extra information would be available if the gnostics had not been persecuted? Or Judas for that matter?
To put that concept another way, imagine if someone, realizing that the history of the internet was about to be lost due to some solar event erasing electronic, magnetic and optical storage and decided to download and punch out a history of the internet on cards. Now say for instance that this person loved the NT and hated the Linux. Would it be any surprise that the version of history that survived was biased?
Now fast forward a thousand years to the next Apocalypse. The penguin is the symbol of all that is vile and evil on Earth. The actual source code is lost, save comments containing rude words as evidence of said evil. Bill Gates is not simply remembered as the first athiest president, but is now god-like. His word is is as God's. The Window is the source of all light. It is forbidden to put more than 640K in a computer. Celebate monks, descended from today's geeks, come up with creative new interpretations of what a 'K' is, but the law remains. Kernel hackers are now almost entirely underground and are in danger of losing their art, having been burned at the stake enough to decide it's just not worth it anymore.
I don't mean to offend sensibilities and I'm stating the following as my opinion. The Bible as it stands today is nothing but a load of old fairy stories. In saying that, I think it should be kept around to keep the amoral masses in line. It's much easier than having to identify and counteract amoral people who discover Taoism.
Draco lives. His current incarnation is Phillip Ruddock, who happens to have drafted these laws. He's also responsible for locking people up without trial in the desert, and our sedition laws and anti-terrorism laws that make it technically illegal to campaign or vote for the opposition in an election.
I'd put him under citizens arrest for crimes against humanity and treason, but I really could be bothered.
Seriously, where I work there are about 150 PCs per floor and this company has 5 floors in this building. Assuming all 50 floors have 150 PCs, how much extra power is required if all 7500 now have to use 3D acceleration 8 hours a day just to run a simple desktop?
When you consider that almost everyone here turns their PC off at night and most of our electricity comes from coal, migrating to Vista is a sure way to increase CO2 emissions.
The push for a 3D desktop by default is terrifyingly stupid.
It _cannot_ be a consequence of global warming. If this happened decades ago, but global warming is making this event more and more common (since it will doom us in _decades_, not _eons_), then you get a contradiction. It's like saying the line y=x passes through (1,1) twice.
Actually, applying a little logic, an increased frequency of these occurences can be due to global warming. Try thinking in curves instead of straight lines. How often does sin(T) pass through zero?
I know that this is an overly simplistic model, but it does attempt to demonstrate that overall global warming will lead to greater extremes of temperature with more rapid transitions. Besides, your model was even more simplistic.
We just had an unusually warm Southern winter which caused more ice to break away from Antartica than usual. When I say unusually warm, I mean compared with the last umpteen hunned thousand years.
Followed up with an unseasonal cold snap that produced snow as low as 90 mile beach in South East Gippsland, which is pretty bloody close to sea level and just across the Tasman from where this iceburg is now. No wonder this iceburg made it so far North. And for those who don't know, snow is quite rare for Gippsland in the hills.
Could this cold wind coming up from the South be due in some part to all the extra ice cubes floating around in the Southern Ocean? The ones that broke off when it got a little to warm down there? IANAM, but it seems to fit with some predictions I read.
Well different people have different ideas of what it means for the press to be free. For me, the right not to reveal sources is not fundamental to the freedom of press. On the other hand, many of these countries ranking high in "freedom of press" outlaw "hate speech". I consider the ability to speak one's opinion, no matter how nasty it is, as a necessary prerequisite for freedom of speech. So if you change those two aspects of the rankings, I imagine the ordering would change dramatically.
So you prefer a fascist version of freedom. You do realise that under your model of freedom, any organisation can incite violence against any group they want (muslims, blacks, jews) without fear of recrimination? A goverment can incite fear of and violence against any group, undertake all manner of criminal activity and threaten potential whistleblowers with death and journalists with prison. Your idea of freedom sounds remarkably like Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia and Bush's America.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but Switzerland, along with most of Europe, sent most of their crazy, psychopathic bizarro crackpot genetic stock to the new world centuries ago!
But guns are bad and dangerous.
If we just sprinkle polonium 210 everywhere, we'll have all the lean meat we can eat and we won't need all those naughty guns.
How is that a valid comparision? Are you saying that global warming is a disaster waiting to befall oil? Are you saying that the existence of Tokyo is somehow precipitating said major disturbance in the Earth's crust?
From what I can tell you are comparing apples and oranges in the first, then going on to a value comparison that seems to be comparing the dollar with the survival of a population without whom the dollar loses all value within the area of interest.
You then continue with some strange notion that scientific proof is about democratic consensus or that a scientific theory that was born from observation of a natural phenomenon and later became a political movement is somehow less scientific due to the prejudices of the politicians who first noticed the phenomenon and voiced their concerns.
In a master stroke, you finish with a strange rant about how a political framework similar to some ideas advocated by Jesus Christ somehow has something to do with fashion, science and fucking turtles on camera for all I can make out.
So your point is what? That science cannot remain apolitical when donkeys like you insist on weighing into the debate? Oh right, yes, good, I see your point...... shame really.....
This is just like VHS vs Beta. Only when people tried to argue that Beta was technically better than VHS, they were actually right.
If people in the audience have Sony-Ericsson or Nokia phones with media players, they could get a blootooth push.
No DRM there, and it doubles as aphone!
Who catagorises the parties?
I'm going to vote in a state election tomorrow (Victoria Australia) and this week I received a few pieces of snail mail containing outright lies. Parties with similar policies lie about each other to try and win votes. In some areas they claim one set of policies, in others they switch, depending on who they're trying to impress. The same thing happens federally as well. You'd think that just publicity in the news media would expose this, but people seem too stupid to notice.
What safegaurds are there in this system stop such abuse? If it's not possible, I see no advantage to it.
I would prefer to see laws enacted where politicians who are shown to have gained office through deceit are put in stocks in public places and the people are charged 50c a piece of rotten fruit to throw at them. I know it's not sexy technological, but it would be much more satisfying, better for democracy in the long run and profitable.
1. Per capita, darling ;-P. Yes they are expanding and CO2 emissions are increasing as is the case with India. Imagine a world where rich countries didn't just say "I won't do it unless the developing economies do it", but actually took some leadership and serious investment into developing the new technologies. Then we say to the Chinese, "hey, no need to reduce energy production, try doing it this way. How about we license the technology to you so that you can manufacture it for us?" I'm not saying that there is no research into clean energy, I'm saying there could be a lot more and developed economies would benefit enormously in the long term (ie longer than two terms as president of the US).
2. I'm not getting into a who's-read-what penis size competion with you, honey bunny. I live in the second largest CO2 producer per capita, and we have a long history of causing ecological problems that have led to economic problems by trying to manipulate natural systems to fix problems that we created by manipulating natural systems. In most cases, studies have made it look safe but things are very real in the real world.
You know that old song about the old woman who swallowed a fly and neglected to put her fingers down her throat? Sure, throwing up isn't pleasant, but it's not hard to clean up and I prefer it to creating a situation where my grand kids will have to eat a horse.
3. I don't believe we should halt all technological development out of fear just as I don't believe it's a good idea to use graphite to insulate nuclear reactor cores with super-heated water nearby. Where there is a safer option that can lead to greater technological development, I'll opt for that any day.
We already know how to make mirrors, angle them to re-direct light and steer orbital vehicles, so what's to learn? We're not very good at using ambient thermal energy in massively distributed networks to generate electrity. Imagine if the best solution to the problem was to leave the carbon in the atmosphere and use it to trap heat so that our power plants and appliances didn't create too much global cooling, that's a bit different and may present a new option 5.
I do believe that the risks of terrorism, mal-intent or accident from putting mirrors in space outweigh the benefits. I also believe that should any single nation do this, other nations could well consider it a threat. In the 1940s, the United States dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan, and then two days later, when Japan had already tried to surrender, the United States did it again. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States used agent orange to kill jungles and crops in Vietnam. In the 1990s and into this century, the United States has used white phosphorus, cluster munitions in civilian areas and depleted uranium on agricultural land. The United States continues to refuse to subject itself to penalty under international treaties on war crimes.
I know that most Americans who know about these actions are not proud of them and I really don't want to come across as anti-American, in fact I consider myself a friend of the United States. It's as a friend that I'm explaining why it is unlikely that many other people would trust the United States to have control over mirrors in space and why it would have a good chance of increasing the threat of terrorism towards the United States. I wonder how the United States would react if China put giant mirrors in space.
As for Al Gore's head, you may well be right. I suppose it would need to be big to store the brain that invented the internet, however I don't think it would remain intact in a vacuum. ;-D
Sorry I got on your nerves. I'm not trying to irritate or offend, just put things from another perspective in an attempt to increase understanding and provoke thought as opposed to replaying thoughts. I also seriously believe that option 1 is technically the simplest and, somewhat counter-intuitively, will lead to greater advances in technology.
And so theStorminMoron used selective reasoning to deny human impact on climate change as the planet rapidly warmed. On and on he argued, as the ice that covered the vast land masses of Greenland and Antartica slid into the ocean, flooding cities, farmlands spaceports and server rooms around the globe.
God looked down from heaven, closed her eyes, bowed her head and whispered, "If only they weren't so busy trying to point the finger at everyone else and just took responsibility for their own fuck ups. What a waste. What a bunch of morons."
"I'm so tired of this," she sighed.
Okay, from an international point of view, or at least a view from outside the United States of America, let's whittle down the options.
1. Sounds feasible. So a bunch of dinosaurs who think you can't have a vibrant economy without digging crap up and burning it lose some money, so some fat, self centred and mildly psychopathic idiots aren't allowed to drive SUVs. Boo hoo.
2. How much dust? What effect will that have on direct radiation reaching the ground for crops? What are the consequences for the natural habitats, what extinctions will it cause and what will the flow on effects be? How long will it take for these effects to reach equilibrium and isn't it just easier to cause the extinction of the human dinosaurs who put money before survival and insist on digging crap up and burning it? Sheesh, you rocket scientists don't really think much beyond flinging shit into orbit, do you?
3. Consider the security implications of big mirrors in space. I assume there would be a remote way to steer them. I assert that it would be hackable. Also, see point 2, and in particular the part about dinosaurs. Points 2 and 3 are so dangerous that I would suggest preventing them at gun point would be a sensible option.
4. Again, this is from an wider standpoint than the United States of America, as is the issue. Your domestic politics are only of interest to the rest of the world when you vote in stupid violent dinosaurs as presidents, or allow your electoral system to be compromised to put said dinosaurs in government. Otherwise we really don't give a shit.
Given the above in depth analysis, we can narrow it down to two options:
1. Reduce CO2
2. Gunpoint
And in an effort to reach a consensus in good faith, and given your previously stated your opposition to guns and my personal distaste for forcing change at gun point, we are left with:
1. Reduce CO2
So go ahead, choose.
Don't forget to place your low-density media inside a stone box with an ASCII/binary lookup table carved into the lid.
As I understand it, the texts of the OT were extremely contraversial. As they have survived, they are missing a lot of the original story. For example the only remaining reference to the Earth-Mother figure common in other tribal religions is in the story of Cain and Abel. If you realize that the stories of the OT started as tribal stories in North Africa and look at the other surviving tribal religions in the area, which are extremely similar to the OT, you'll start to get an idea of how much was axed.
Ummmm, I call bullshit here. As you said, a lot of the NT was done largely under the Byzantine empire, where people with power and money had the means to oppress and even eliminate people who stood in the way of their interests.There's a book called "Folk Law of the Old Testament" which is an interesting read on this subject, but only if you aren't one of those "the bible is literal truth" guys. Sorry I can't remember the author right now, but Amazon may be worth a try.
Religion was used not only as a way to keep the people who need fairy stories to maintain morality in line spiritually, but also socially. The very fact that the Catholic commandments prohibits stealing, without qualification, is testament to this. Are you saying the Holy Spirit forbids people from stealing just enough food to feed their starving family? Honestly, how much extra information would be available if the gnostics had not been persecuted? Or Judas for that matter?
To put that concept another way, imagine if someone, realizing that the history of the internet was about to be lost due to some solar event erasing electronic, magnetic and optical storage and decided to download and punch out a history of the internet on cards. Now say for instance that this person loved the NT and hated the Linux. Would it be any surprise that the version of history that survived was biased?
Now fast forward a thousand years to the next Apocalypse. The penguin is the symbol of all that is vile and evil on Earth. The actual source code is lost, save comments containing rude words as evidence of said evil. Bill Gates is not simply remembered as the first athiest president, but is now god-like. His word is is as God's. The Window is the source of all light. It is forbidden to put more than 640K in a computer.
Celebate monks, descended from today's geeks, come up with creative new interpretations of what a 'K' is, but the law remains. Kernel hackers are now almost entirely underground and are in danger of losing their art, having been burned at the stake enough to decide it's just not worth it anymore.
I don't mean to offend sensibilities and I'm stating the following as my opinion. The Bible as it stands today is nothing but a load of old fairy stories. In saying that, I think it should be kept around to keep the amoral masses in line. It's much easier than having to identify and counteract amoral people who discover Taoism.
There's an interesting article here.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/the-65000 -question-do-you-own-an-ipod/2006/11/20/1163871308 087.html
It seems that the senate's worried too.
I'd put him under citizens arrest for crimes against humanity and treason, but I really could be bothered.
Seriously, where I work there are about 150 PCs per floor and this company has 5 floors in this building. Assuming all 50 floors have 150 PCs, how much extra power is required if all 7500 now have to use 3D acceleration 8 hours a day just to run a simple desktop?
When you consider that almost everyone here turns their PC off at night and most of our electricity comes from coal, migrating to Vista is a sure way to increase CO2 emissions.
The push for a 3D desktop by default is terrifyingly stupid.
Actually, applying a little logic, an increased frequency of these occurences can be due to global warming. Try thinking in curves instead of straight lines. How often does sin(T) pass through zero?
I know that this is an overly simplistic model, but it does attempt to demonstrate that overall global warming will lead to greater extremes of temperature with more rapid transitions. Besides, your model was even more simplistic.
We just had an unusually warm Southern winter which caused more ice to break away from Antartica than usual. When I say unusually warm, I mean compared with the last umpteen hunned thousand years.
Followed up with an unseasonal cold snap that produced snow as low as 90 mile beach in South East Gippsland, which is pretty bloody close to sea level and just across the Tasman from where this iceburg is now. No wonder this iceburg made it so far North. And for those who don't know, snow is quite rare for Gippsland in the hills.
Could this cold wind coming up from the South be due in some part to all the extra ice cubes floating around in the Southern Ocean? The ones that broke off when it got a little to warm down there? IANAM, but it seems to fit with some predictions I read.
So you prefer a fascist version of freedom.
You do realise that under your model of freedom, any organisation can incite violence against any group they want (muslims, blacks, jews) without fear of recrimination?
A goverment can incite fear of and violence against any group, undertake all manner of criminal activity and threaten potential whistleblowers with death and journalists with prison.
Your idea of freedom sounds remarkably like Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia and Bush's America.