Time has a good way of eliminating "pretty obvious" marks. Consider the Iturralde Crater is probably no more than 30k years old, at the outside.. it was only found by satellite photographs. Consider Angkor Wat, Aztec city of Yautepec, Machu Picchu. All of these were basically lost in a fairly short time (geologically) due to the elements and nature. Although man-made, they were certainly pretty big marks on the area around them.
That's assuming impacts. If they broke up in the air, then the traces would last even a shorter time. Tunguska and the blast in the Egyptian desert, as examples.
While none of these are as big as this specific strike, the reason for the disapperance of visable artifacts are the same. It takes a rare set of enviromental factors to keep these marks on the planet surface for long (long as in: 1000's of years).
More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished -- 799 million of them live in the developing world.
More than 153 million of the world's malnourished people are children under the age of 5.
Six million children under the age of 5 die every year as a result of hunger.
I'd say that those simple facts make famine something more than a historical problem. You are correct in one sense though, technology has made it so we "could" help these people.
In the case of pandemics, technology actually works the opposite. Faster, and easier, worldwide travel means a more widespread communication of viral or bacterial agents in a smaller time frame. In present day, Influenza takes more time to show symptoms that would cause enough alarm to effect quarantine. In 1918-19 worldwide travel was still via ocean vessels, which took considerable time to get from point A to point B, yet that pandemic was responsible for 20-40 million deaths.
In the case of AIDS, while you seem to think it's in "long-term decline," the numbers from the CDC for the years 2000-2004 (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/At-A- Glance.htm) show that for this time the cases of AIDS diagnosis and people living with AIDS increased each year, and this is just in the US. Admittedly, certain segments have had declining new cases... prenatal transmission, and injection drug users.
As for public awareness, (from http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/pomr050806pkg.cfm): "significant percentages of Americans still think HIV might be spread through kissing, sharing a drinking glass and touching toilet seat -- 37%, 22% and 16% respectively."
You've probably missed a lot, however it should be noted that scientists view nature and develop ideas as to why things work the way they do. When they find something they believe is potentially a very bad thing, they often do bring this to the light of day. Some things you mention are fairly obvious... suggesting there will be a flu pandemic is a no-brainer, we've had them before, and we'll have them again.. it is just a matter of time. Others, like the asteroids from space, are because these scientists don't believe the world was created 6000 years ago in the exact form it currently is, and they see these huge asteroid impact craters and say "geez, it would be bad if this happened again," and they realize that it too is only a matter of time.
If you want the real doomsayers, I'd suggest looking at religion. All the major deity based religions are religions of death. Do you think Christians discussing, and wanting to bring about, the "end of times" is not doomsaying? If Christianity (for example) was a religion of life, the premise would be that you DO NOT get to do anything you want in life, only to ask forgiveness at the end, and still be able to go to heaven.
How many times do the Jehovah Witnesses have to come to your door before you "get" what doomsaying is all about? Lets face it, religion is like buying an insurance policy against the inevitable, with no clue if you'll get to collect it, and not being able to complain about it once you realize it's fraud.
"The overwhelming majority of Americans are reasonable people who are nothing like the extremist nutjobs portrayed on TV, and our biggest downfall will be ignoring that fact."
...our biggest downfall will be listening to those extremists, and continue giving them the power to elect officials. When we have politicians who believe they've been placed in office by God himself, we have a real problem.
While my MMO gaming experience is a bit limited (i didn't jump on every bandwagon to go by); 6 years of EQ, a little CoH, very little DAoC, Guild Wars, Realms, and Eve; it seems that when players are given the option of PvP vs. PvE, the majority will go for PvE.
At EQ's peak, with almost 50 servers, only 4 servers were PvP, and those 4 servers were consistanly in the bottom 5-8 servers for players online (prior to Sony eliminating the ability to see that distinction). Admittedly, EQ was designed to be PvE, and it's PvP was, at best, a dreamland for gankers.
I haven't tried WoW, although I can count. They have more PvE servers than PvP. I'd assume, they running the servers at a certain capacity, as opposed to having far more people on far fewer PvP servers... so it'd follow that there's more PvE players.
With Eve, the only option for non-pvp content is to stay in high-sec(security) space. One of the most common complaints from the pvpers is: there's so few people in low-sec space; the reason given by high-sec's: gankers. If CCP would come out with an alternate server cluster that was PvE only, I'd guess that CCP would find itself with well more than double it's current player base. When you cancel Eve, one of the specific choices of "reasons" is: pvp. Obviously it's a downside for a significant number of people who trial the game.
Any PvE game could be describe to be "You'll be able to adventure and have fun, but only WITH friends. Not against them." and they sell fine. If you can do both in one game, and do them well, you'll have a hit.. but that's extreemly difficult because of the differing mindsets of the two groups.
It's hard to fathom a game that will come close to WoW's marketshare, although it was hard to fathom a game that could come close to EQ's marketshare when they had 500k subscribers. I don't think being PvP will be the defining requirement for any game to come to that, i think it'll simple have to be a good, solid, well developed game and a vast game world.
Slashdot Mirror
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362. stm
If you get a chance to catch a re-run of the program, it's pretty well done.
Time has a good way of eliminating "pretty obvious" marks. Consider the Iturralde Crater is probably no more than 30k years old, at the outside.. it was only found by satellite photographs. Consider Angkor Wat, Aztec city of Yautepec, Machu Picchu. All of these were basically lost in a fairly short time (geologically) due to the elements and nature. Although man-made, they were certainly pretty big marks on the area around them.
That's assuming impacts. If they broke up in the air, then the traces would last even a shorter time. Tunguska and the blast in the Egyptian desert, as examples.
While none of these are as big as this specific strike, the reason for the disapperance of visable artifacts are the same. It takes a rare set of enviromental factors to keep these marks on the planet surface for long (long as in: 1000's of years).
"Moot" is a neat word, used correctly.
- Glance.htm) show that for this time the cases of AIDS diagnosis and people living with AIDS increased each year, and this is just in the US. Admittedly, certain segments have had declining new cases... prenatal transmission, and injection drug users.
: "significant percentages of Americans still think HIV might be spread through kissing, sharing a drinking glass and touching toilet seat -- 37%, 22% and 16% respectively."
From Care.org, hunger facts:
More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished -- 799 million of them live in the developing world.
More than 153 million of the world's malnourished people are children under the age of 5.
Six million children under the age of 5 die every year as a result of hunger.
I'd say that those simple facts make famine something more than a historical problem. You are correct in one sense though, technology has made it so we "could" help these people.
In the case of pandemics, technology actually works the opposite. Faster, and easier, worldwide travel means a more widespread communication of viral or bacterial agents in a smaller time frame. In present day, Influenza takes more time to show symptoms that would cause enough alarm to effect quarantine. In 1918-19 worldwide travel was still via ocean vessels, which took considerable time to get from point A to point B, yet that pandemic was responsible for 20-40 million deaths.
In the case of AIDS, while you seem to think it's in "long-term decline," the numbers from the CDC for the years 2000-2004 (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/At-A
As for public awareness, (from http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/pomr050806pkg.cfm)
The following is off topic:
You've probably missed a lot, however it should be noted that scientists view nature and develop ideas as to why things work the way they do. When they find something they believe is potentially a very bad thing, they often do bring this to the light of day. Some things you mention are fairly obvious... suggesting there will be a flu pandemic is a no-brainer, we've had them before, and we'll have them again.. it is just a matter of time. Others, like the asteroids from space, are because these scientists don't believe the world was created 6000 years ago in the exact form it currently is, and they see these huge asteroid impact craters and say "geez, it would be bad if this happened again," and they realize that it too is only a matter of time.
If you want the real doomsayers, I'd suggest looking at religion. All the major deity based religions are religions of death. Do you think Christians discussing, and wanting to bring about, the "end of times" is not doomsaying? If Christianity (for example) was a religion of life, the premise would be that you DO NOT get to do anything you want in life, only to ask forgiveness at the end, and still be able to go to heaven.
How many times do the Jehovah Witnesses have to come to your door before you "get" what doomsaying is all about? Lets face it, religion is like buying an insurance policy against the inevitable, with no clue if you'll get to collect it, and not being able to complain about it once you realize it's fraud.
"The overwhelming majority of Americans are reasonable people who are nothing like the extremist nutjobs portrayed on TV, and our biggest downfall will be ignoring that fact."
...our biggest downfall will be listening to those extremists, and continue giving them the power to elect officials. When we have politicians who believe they've been placed in office by God himself, we have a real problem.
While my MMO gaming experience is a bit limited (i didn't jump on every bandwagon to go by); 6 years of EQ, a little CoH, very little DAoC, Guild Wars, Realms, and Eve; it seems that when players are given the option of PvP vs. PvE, the majority will go for PvE.
At EQ's peak, with almost 50 servers, only 4 servers were PvP, and those 4 servers were consistanly in the bottom 5-8 servers for players online (prior to Sony eliminating the ability to see that distinction). Admittedly, EQ was designed to be PvE, and it's PvP was, at best, a dreamland for gankers.
I haven't tried WoW, although I can count. They have more PvE servers than PvP. I'd assume, they running the servers at a certain capacity, as opposed to having far more people on far fewer PvP servers... so it'd follow that there's more PvE players.
With Eve, the only option for non-pvp content is to stay in high-sec(security) space. One of the most common complaints from the pvpers is: there's so few people in low-sec space; the reason given by high-sec's: gankers. If CCP would come out with an alternate server cluster that was PvE only, I'd guess that CCP would find itself with well more than double it's current player base. When you cancel Eve, one of the specific choices of "reasons" is: pvp. Obviously it's a downside for a significant number of people who trial the game.
Any PvE game could be describe to be "You'll be able to adventure and have fun, but only WITH friends. Not against them." and they sell fine. If you can do both in one game, and do them well, you'll have a hit.. but that's extreemly difficult because of the differing mindsets of the two groups.
It's hard to fathom a game that will come close to WoW's marketshare, although it was hard to fathom a game that could come close to EQ's marketshare when they had 500k subscribers. I don't think being PvP will be the defining requirement for any game to come to that, i think it'll simple have to be a good, solid, well developed game and a vast game world.
Peace does sell... it just has to be good peace.