Be hard for us to have a computer that has the processing and storage potential of the human brain when those aren't known.
While Hans Moravec guestimates, by extrapolating from known capabilities of the retina to process image inputs, a brain has a processing capacity of 100 trillion instructions per second, and is likely to be surpassed by computers by 2030. http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
That is a guestimate at best.
Furthermore the Brain unlike a computer is able to do amazing things even when it has suffered terrible damage, see Kim Peek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek
I'd go on, but I'm off to the Doctor about my Stroke damaged brain:)
I hadn't thought of that, but that is a good and valid point. People don't get enough information on the absolutely terrible things the Japanese did and would have done under the Co-Prosperity Sphere they were establishing. In many ways it was alot like the model the Germans were attempting to establish in Eastern Europe where the locals would be enslaved to Overlords sent there to settle and exploit the lands. The Japanese wanted slave labor and materials, the Germans wanted to build vast farming collectives with fortress communities at the center.
Had the Japanese had 5-10 more years in SE Asia and Oceana, tens of millions would have died.
You'll note that for all the "arming" the United States is accused of doing in Iraq, that the Iraqi Armed Forces were equiped not with American gear, but Soviet, Chinese, South African and French equipment. MiGs and Mirages side by side flying over the T-62s and AMX-30s. While over Baghdad the Allies dodged SA-2s, ZSU-23s and Roland missiles.
Actually, if you look at the facts, the United States continued to provide material and technical assistance to Iran during the 1980s, following the end of the Shah. You might have heard of it, it was called Iran-Contra.
"...funding a state that came into being via terrorism in Israel." So Israel is a terrorist state, and the Arabs that invaded Jewish lands in 1948 are...defending themselves? Alright.
Now in South America, one might note that all the "meddling" and "terrorism" do there to the left wingers is supported by the other side of the political spectrum, since in Central and South America from 1950 on the Soviets were meddling and terrorizing folks too, like Afghanistan where they left tens of millions of land mines behind, threatened to murder reporters and in Pakistan condicted the majority of the terrorist acts in the World during the late 1980s.
Bringing an end to the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and ending Saddam's regime are "bad deeds".
Likewise, in El Salvador the United States not only backed the Rightwingers, we ran black ops against the Leftists, yet when the peace talks came, the Leftists demanded the Green Berets be at the table as mediators because they knew the Americans would be fair to both sides. Now that said, gangs like MS-13 are fallout from the Wars in Central America and American Immigration Policy, but it's a different kind of terrorism there.
Robert Kaplan in Soldiers of God talks about the failure of the West in Afghanistan post Soviet Pullout. I shoulda posted this earlier but I was watching NASCAR and doing other things so I didn't cite or put the pipe down, JayBlalock.
Afghanistan was always an odd war for the Western Media, there was a bias for the Soviets, as illustrated in 1980 when Alexander Cockburn said Afghanistan deserved to be "raped", there wasn't good stark contrasting video like there was in Vietnam or Lebanon, and it was a pain to get to. Furthermore just as Afghanistan needed and could have used the help in 1989, the Eastern Bloc collapsed and that dominated Western Policy makers through the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, Desert Shield, then the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Plus the Pakistanis colored our impression of what was going on alot too.
If there is Muslim unity in the world, then the United States and EU shouldn't have had to pony up a penny for the rebuilding of Afghanistan, but the fact is that even the wealthy Muslim nations don't have robust economies and can't afford to rebuild Afghanistan, in fact they used Afghanistan as a dumping ground for thier revolutionaries. In 1991, who would the United States or EU have written checks to? Rebuilding Afghanistan in the 1990s would have taken a large Western Military force to defend the nation-building, something that IS going on now and requires a large military force. In the 1990s when Americans have to fix Europe's problems in Kosovo and Bosnia while the armed forces are downsizing, how would the Clinton Adminstration have justified a Division in Afghanistan and tens of billions of dollars in aid?
I agree with Richard Allen, there are increasingly Anti-American stories, the usual amount of duplicate articles, and overall lower quality than/. of old.
And when I say "anti-american" articles, yea saying that 24 propaganda is/. worthy, then articles about the Al Jazeera working with Terror Groups should be up on the home page too, or hell start covering some of the things the Arab media says about us, if all that which you comment on are "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters", then it all is
No, the Taliban was not the only group in Afghanistan in the 1980s during the war against the Soviets. The United States, Pakistan, China and the United Kingdom, among others, aided a number of tribal groups and splinter groups in the War. The Soviet Union was not a paradise compared to what the Taliban set up, it was much worse. The Soviet Union left behind millions of mines, they destroyed the agricultural systems, they booby-trapped toys and grain, not the Taliban.
Why did the United States go into Kosovo? Because the EU and United States decided that opposing Serbia was the way to go.
The United States defended Saudi Arabia against Iraq in 1990-on, the Saudi military was and is small and ineffective compared to the Iranian and Iraqi militaries. There was never a plan to take the Iraqi capital in Desert Storm/Shield/Saber.
You mean like all the credit the United States got for aiding Muslims in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia from 1994-now, Kosovo from 1999-now, the defense of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the liberation of Kuwait...
Yea, the United States has spent tens of billions to help and be nice to Muslims and it got the US nothing.
No, not in other words do "...corporations do really bad things that are a detriment to the planet as a whole and then get a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, someone smoking some weed goes to jail for the rest of his life."
People do bad things too, remeber Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot? Ideology has done more to destroy the planet and humanity in the last 200 years that Corporations have.
A Corporation can be held to Criminal and Civil crimes just like a person can be.
Corporations disagree with the Local, State and Federal Governments all the time. The notion that the Corps and Government are hand in hand skipping through the flowers is nonsense.
Corporations are largely like normal people when it comes to the government. They push, bend, break the laws till they get caught. Instead of doing it with Speeding or drinking or other drugs, the Corps do it with taxes, tariffs, pollution laws and so forth.
Yes corporations are special interests, so are organizations of people. While on one side Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Apple or Ford might seem like unstopable magastructures stomping Joe Worker and living in sin with the Government, on the other side AARP, NRA, AFLCIO are even more unstopable groups stomping around and casting fear into a Senator with whom they don't agree with.
Take a minute to think about old people with vision and reflex problems and driving. Is there a need to have folks over say 70 retested for thier driver's licence? Hell yes, is there any damned chance of a Bill even making it to Committe in any state in the US? No way because the AARP will come down like your Great-Aunt's hug, theres no escaping it. Elsewhere there is talk about making bipods for rifles illegal...here comes the NRA* sending out millions of emails and sending in thiere lobbyists.
* - I am a member of the NRA
Re:Forgive me if this is a stupid question...
on
Space Race 2.0 has Begun
·
· Score: 5, Informative
They go up about 800-1200 km, then come back down on the other side of the planet or within 6,000-plus miles of thier launch site. An ICBM is going approximately 15,000 mph (Mach 23 or 24,000 kph) at burnout.
Since we're on suborbitals, Sprint was a pretty cool system for missile interception. Sprint was a marvel of aeronautics and space technology reaching a speed of Mach 10 in 5 seconds. Built by Martin Marietta, it was designed to operate at hypersonic speeds in the earth's atmosphere; at its top speed, the missile's skin became hotter than the interior of its rocket motor and glowed incandescently. To make the launch as quick as possible, the cover was blown off the silo by explosive charges; Then the missile was ejected by an explosive-driven piston. As the missile cleared the silo, the first stage fired and the missile was tilted toward its target. The first stage was of very short, almost explosive, duration. The second stage fired within 1 - 2 seconds of launch. Interception at an altitude of 1500m to 30000m took at most 15 seconds. The electronic components of the Sprint were designed to withstand accelerations of 100 times gravity. The missile was 27 feet long, consisted of two stages, and used solid fuel. Sprint carried an ER nuclear warhead of a few KT.
Looking there it looks like the Petroleum Industry has had it out for alcohol fuels for some time. Now your statement that "we had it for far longer than we had refined petroleum products" isn't really accurate as we've used Petroleum since around the 4th century from wells and prior to that from seepage.
Can't do the math to come up with out of the air figures like the 15% you offer without some figures. How much ethanol do we get per bushel of corn? Average yield in the US is around 160 bushels to the acre. Brazil with a much more inefficient agricultural base than the US is able to replace 40% of its gasoline with ethanol.
"The United States fuel ethanol industry is based largely on maize. As of 2005, its capacity is 15 billion liters annually, although the Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires U.S. fuel ethanol production to increase to 7.5 billion gallons (28 billion liters) by 2012."
How exactly is "Ethanol is actually a pretty shitty fuel"?
Actually if the oil companies told us exactly how much oil they estimate, and they don't know because all the basins haven't been explored yet and some of the known basins have been only looked at in passing, the price of oil would fall through the floor since when we take into account Shale Oil and Tar Sands, theres ALOT of oil left. ALOT, Shale Oil alone might be upwards of 200-250 times the amount of "rock oil" or petroleum.
Well, in North America at least there is alot of land going unfarmed that used to be farmed and alot of grains and corn going into storage or being removed from the production through Government programs.
Half of the USDA conservation budget is to retire land, right now 10% or 35 million acres of farm land is retired in the United States and it's increasing every year. That's land that can be farmed, not land which has been taken up by urban sprawl, which from 1992-2004 was about 2.2 million acres.
Yes, I'm sure a 400 billion dollar crash fusion program would have gotten through Congress too.
In the United States for one, large percentages of farmland that used to grow Wheat, Oats, Barley, Corn, Sunflowers, and Cattle are now in "Set Aside" Programs where the Federal Government pays the farmer not to grow anything on it for long periods to help support prices. Furthermore, on lands in the United States and other developed and developing countries monoculture farming over say 60-120 years actually say increases in yields.
"If you don't take care of your soil, it becomes less and less fertile. It starts requiring larger and larger amounts of chemical fertilizer, which frell up the environment pretty bad. Soon you get soil erosion, and then you're frelled. You have to let it lay fallow for a long time to recover."
While some crops can reduce fertility, Safflower comes to mind in my farm's experiance, through rotation and setting aside a field for 1 year, you can see yields remain uniform for long periods. Our farm in South Dakota used the same land for 50-75 years for Wheat, Sunflowers, Oats with no reduction in yield and actual increases in yield due to better equipment and better breeds.
Setting aside a field for 1 year lets you maintain the yield. Intesively farm any plot of land it will NOT necessarily make it go to shit reeaaaaally fast. Farming replaced the ecosystem in that place, so your comments about ecosystems and messing with the environment are not really accurate.
Yes, there are estimates of vast amounts in the Tar Sands and the Oil Shales in North America.
The US Energy Information Agency estimated that in 1999 550 billion barrels of oil could be extracted from Tar Sands at $30 US per barrel and lower. At $40 or more per barrel 500% more can be extracted from oil fields and reserves of any type than can be when the oil is at $30 US per barrel.
The total size of Shale Oil as of 1999 was estimated to be 242 times the amount of conventional petroleum reserves. There is up to 8 times more Shale Oil than petroleum, natural gas, coal, peat and tar sands combined.
I have a minor in Geology and recently took a class on Geology and World Affairs, the Professor has his Ph.D in Petroleum Geology and worked in the field for around 30 years with a focus on the North Sea and Texas Oil. That professor also professed the Peak Oil theory, however a problem with him, and other Petroleum Geologists with a focus on "rock oil" is an over specialzation on "rock oil". When I asked during our discussions on Peak Oil about Tar Sands or Oil Shales, I was told that "...if it don't come up through a pipe most Petroleum Geologists don't know a damned thing about it." And that in particular, this Professor with his 30 years experiance didn't know a damned thing about it because that isn't what his firms worked on.
Now then, I don't know what Professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes background is, but I can see he is writing books on the subject as so has a vested and economic interest in this theory. Furthermore he seems to discount Ethanol, fuel cells, Methane hydrates, oil shale, and Nuclear power, as "shimmering dreams" so I think one needs to take what he is saying with a grain of salt since, as stated before, his vested interest to make money at this point is "peak oil".
The truth behind "rock oil" right now is that there is alot being used, and there is alot out there and there are still a good number of basins which have not been explored, including the Arctic Ocean and there is alot of oil we can recoved in "played out" areas with new techniques and with new technologies.
For a non-Culture book, The Bridge would be neat, but Against a Dark Background might even be better than Player of Games for sci-fi and Iain M. Banks books.
The Declaration of Colonial Rights in a Resolution is not the Constitution nor is it the UN Decleration of Human Rights. And a quotation from a Wikipedia article does not really live up to a Constitution.
Also, "You shall not steal" is sometimes interpreted as kidnapping, since there are other injunctions against stealing property in the Bible. Theft of property is forbidden elsewhere. Theft of property is not a capital offense like Murder or the other Commandments dictate.
OK, show me in the Bible, Koran, Declaration of Human Rights, Constitution, etc where you have a "god-given right to use my own property as I see fit."
Males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females, Women report attempting suicide during their lifetime about three times as often as men.
Suicide took the lives of 30,622 people in 2001 in the US with say around 292 million people. 127 million people in Japan, so the suicide rate in Japan is over twice that of the US.
I've been to the ER a couple times in the last 6 years, never had to pre-pay, only forms I filled out were medical background forms until later, after treatment that they asked about insurance.
Never pre-pay for treatment or appointments either, and I've been to a number of organizations, Kaiser Permenante, Mayo Clinic, Oregon Health Sciences University and private practices among others.
If the extra speed, extra cores don't do anything make the end product better for the user, in whatever the user is doing, then there isn't a point to it.
That's one of the problems with hardware/software right now, most of the software doesn't get any benefit from the speed/cores, yet the hardware makers are shoving more speed/cores down the end user's throat and keeping the price of computing higher.
Slashdot Mirror
Be hard for us to have a computer that has the processing and storage potential of the human brain when those aren't known.
:)
While Hans Moravec guestimates, by extrapolating from known capabilities of the retina to process image inputs, a brain has a processing capacity of 100 trillion instructions per second, and is likely to be surpassed by computers by 2030. http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
That is a guestimate at best.
Furthermore the Brain unlike a computer is able to do amazing things even when it has suffered terrible damage, see Kim Peek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek
I'd go on, but I'm off to the Doctor about my Stroke damaged brain
I hadn't thought of that, but that is a good and valid point. People don't get enough information on the absolutely terrible things the Japanese did and would have done under the Co-Prosperity Sphere they were establishing. In many ways it was alot like the model the Germans were attempting to establish in Eastern Europe where the locals would be enslaved to Overlords sent there to settle and exploit the lands. The Japanese wanted slave labor and materials, the Germans wanted to build vast farming collectives with fortress communities at the center.
Had the Japanese had 5-10 more years in SE Asia and Oceana, tens of millions would have died.
You'll note that for all the "arming" the United States is accused of doing in Iraq, that the Iraqi Armed Forces were equiped not with American gear, but Soviet, Chinese, South African and French equipment. MiGs and Mirages side by side flying over the T-62s and AMX-30s. While over Baghdad the Allies dodged SA-2s, ZSU-23s and Roland missiles.
Actually, if you look at the facts, the United States continued to provide material and technical assistance to Iran during the 1980s, following the end of the Shah. You might have heard of it, it was called Iran-Contra.
"...funding a state that came into being via terrorism in Israel." So Israel is a terrorist state, and the Arabs that invaded Jewish lands in 1948 are...defending themselves? Alright.
Now in South America, one might note that all the "meddling" and "terrorism" do there to the left wingers is supported by the other side of the political spectrum, since in Central and South America from 1950 on the Soviets were meddling and terrorizing folks too, like Afghanistan where they left tens of millions of land mines behind, threatened to murder reporters and in Pakistan condicted the majority of the terrorist acts in the World during the late 1980s.
Bringing an end to the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and ending Saddam's regime are "bad deeds".
Likewise, in El Salvador the United States not only backed the Rightwingers, we ran black ops against the Leftists, yet when the peace talks came, the Leftists demanded the Green Berets be at the table as mediators because they knew the Americans would be fair to both sides. Now that said, gangs like MS-13 are fallout from the Wars in Central America and American Immigration Policy, but it's a different kind of terrorism there.
Robert Kaplan in Soldiers of God talks about the failure of the West in Afghanistan post Soviet Pullout. I shoulda posted this earlier but I was watching NASCAR and doing other things so I didn't cite or put the pipe down, JayBlalock.
Afghanistan was always an odd war for the Western Media, there was a bias for the Soviets, as illustrated in 1980 when Alexander Cockburn said Afghanistan deserved to be "raped", there wasn't good stark contrasting video like there was in Vietnam or Lebanon, and it was a pain to get to. Furthermore just as Afghanistan needed and could have used the help in 1989, the Eastern Bloc collapsed and that dominated Western Policy makers through the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, Desert Shield, then the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Plus the Pakistanis colored our impression of what was going on alot too.
If there is Muslim unity in the world, then the United States and EU shouldn't have had to pony up a penny for the rebuilding of Afghanistan, but the fact is that even the wealthy Muslim nations don't have robust economies and can't afford to rebuild Afghanistan, in fact they used Afghanistan as a dumping ground for thier revolutionaries. In 1991, who would the United States or EU have written checks to? Rebuilding Afghanistan in the 1990s would have taken a large Western Military force to defend the nation-building, something that IS going on now and requires a large military force. In the 1990s when Americans have to fix Europe's problems in Kosovo and Bosnia while the armed forces are downsizing, how would the Clinton Adminstration have justified a Division in Afghanistan and tens of billions of dollars in aid?
I agree with Richard Allen, there are increasingly Anti-American stories, the usual amount of duplicate articles, and overall lower quality than /. of old.
/. worthy, then articles about the Al Jazeera working with Terror Groups should be up on the home page too, or hell start covering some of the things the Arab media says about us, if all that which you comment on are "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters", then it all is
/. have this on the homepage?
And when I say "anti-american" articles, yea saying that 24 propaganda is
http://www.memri.org/
Hey, there is High Tech in Israel, including an Intel fab, which is News for Nerds, so then why doesn't
Hamas Leader Mahmoud Zahar on Al-Manar TV: Why should we recognize Condoleezza Rice... or Israel's right to exist?
No, the Taliban was not the only group in Afghanistan in the 1980s during the war against the Soviets. The United States, Pakistan, China and the United Kingdom, among others, aided a number of tribal groups and splinter groups in the War. The Soviet Union was not a paradise compared to what the Taliban set up, it was much worse. The Soviet Union left behind millions of mines, they destroyed the agricultural systems, they booby-trapped toys and grain, not the Taliban.
Why did the United States go into Kosovo? Because the EU and United States decided that opposing Serbia was the way to go.
The United States defended Saudi Arabia against Iraq in 1990-on, the Saudi military was and is small and ineffective compared to the Iranian and Iraqi militaries. There was never a plan to take the Iraqi capital in Desert Storm/Shield/Saber.
You mean like all the credit the United States got for aiding Muslims in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia from 1994-now, Kosovo from 1999-now, the defense of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the liberation of Kuwait...
Yea, the United States has spent tens of billions to help and be nice to Muslims and it got the US nothing.
No, not in other words do "...corporations do really bad things that are a detriment to the planet as a whole and then get a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, someone smoking some weed goes to jail for the rest of his life."
People do bad things too, remeber Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot? Ideology has done more to destroy the planet and humanity in the last 200 years that Corporations have.
A Corporation can be held to Criminal and Civil crimes just like a person can be.
Corporations disagree with the Local, State and Federal Governments all the time. The notion that the Corps and Government are hand in hand skipping through the flowers is nonsense.
Corporations are largely like normal people when it comes to the government. They push, bend, break the laws till they get caught. Instead of doing it with Speeding or drinking or other drugs, the Corps do it with taxes, tariffs, pollution laws and so forth.
Yes corporations are special interests, so are organizations of people. While on one side Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Apple or Ford might seem like unstopable magastructures stomping Joe Worker and living in sin with the Government, on the other side AARP, NRA, AFLCIO are even more unstopable groups stomping around and casting fear into a Senator with whom they don't agree with.
Take a minute to think about old people with vision and reflex problems and driving. Is there a need to have folks over say 70 retested for thier driver's licence? Hell yes, is there any damned chance of a Bill even making it to Committe in any state in the US? No way because the AARP will come down like your Great-Aunt's hug, theres no escaping it. Elsewhere there is talk about making bipods for rifles illegal...here comes the NRA* sending out millions of emails and sending in thiere lobbyists.
* - I am a member of the NRA
They go up about 800-1200 km, then come back down on the other side of the planet or within 6,000-plus miles of thier launch site. An ICBM is going approximately 15,000 mph (Mach 23 or 24,000 kph) at burnout.
3 -specs.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/lgm-30_
Since we're on suborbitals, Sprint was a pretty cool system for missile interception. Sprint was a marvel of aeronautics and space technology reaching a speed of Mach 10 in 5 seconds. Built by Martin Marietta, it was designed to operate at hypersonic speeds in the earth's atmosphere; at its top speed, the missile's skin became hotter than the interior of its rocket motor and glowed incandescently. To make the launch as quick as possible, the cover was blown off the silo by explosive charges; Then the missile was ejected by an explosive-driven piston. As the missile cleared the silo, the first stage fired and the missile was tilted toward its target. The first stage was of very short, almost explosive, duration. The second stage fired within 1 - 2 seconds of launch. Interception at an altitude of 1500m to 30000m took at most 15 seconds. The electronic components of the Sprint were designed to withstand accelerations of 100 times gravity. The missile was 27 feet long, consisted of two stages, and used solid fuel. Sprint carried an ER nuclear warhead of a few KT.
Lets not forget that drag racers and other high performance racing cars run on alcohol.
F uel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Alcohol_
Looking there it looks like the Petroleum Industry has had it out for alcohol fuels for some time. Now your statement that "we had it for far longer than we had refined petroleum products" isn't really accurate as we've used Petroleum since around the 4th century from wells and prior to that from seepage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#History
Can't do the math to come up with out of the air figures like the 15% you offer without some figures. How much ethanol do we get per bushel of corn? Average yield in the US is around 160 bushels to the acre. Brazil with a much more inefficient agricultural base than the US is able to replace 40% of its gasoline with ethanol.
"The United States fuel ethanol industry is based largely on maize. As of 2005, its capacity is 15 billion liters annually, although the Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires U.S. fuel ethanol production to increase to 7.5 billion gallons (28 billion liters) by 2012."
How exactly is "Ethanol is actually a pretty shitty fuel"?
Actually if the oil companies told us exactly how much oil they estimate, and they don't know because all the basins haven't been explored yet and some of the known basins have been only looked at in passing, the price of oil would fall through the floor since when we take into account Shale Oil and Tar Sands, theres ALOT of oil left. ALOT, Shale Oil alone might be upwards of 200-250 times the amount of "rock oil" or petroleum.
Well, in North America at least there is alot of land going unfarmed that used to be farmed and alot of grains and corn going into storage or being removed from the production through Government programs.
Half of the USDA conservation budget is to retire land, right now 10% or 35 million acres of farm land is retired in the United States and it's increasing every year. That's land that can be farmed, not land which has been taken up by urban sprawl, which from 1992-2004 was about 2.2 million acres.
Yes, I'm sure a 400 billion dollar crash fusion program would have gotten through Congress too.
In the United States for one, large percentages of farmland that used to grow Wheat, Oats, Barley, Corn, Sunflowers, and Cattle are now in "Set Aside" Programs where the Federal Government pays the farmer not to grow anything on it for long periods to help support prices. Furthermore, on lands in the United States and other developed and developing countries monoculture farming over say 60-120 years actually say increases in yields.
"If you don't take care of your soil, it becomes less and less fertile. It starts requiring larger and larger amounts of chemical fertilizer, which frell up the environment pretty bad. Soon you get soil erosion, and then you're frelled. You have to let it lay fallow for a long time to recover."
While some crops can reduce fertility, Safflower comes to mind in my farm's experiance, through rotation and setting aside a field for 1 year, you can see yields remain uniform for long periods. Our farm in South Dakota used the same land for 50-75 years for Wheat, Sunflowers, Oats with no reduction in yield and actual increases in yield due to better equipment and better breeds.
Setting aside a field for 1 year lets you maintain the yield. Intesively farm any plot of land it will NOT necessarily make it go to shit reeaaaaally fast. Farming replaced the ecosystem in that place, so your comments about ecosystems and messing with the environment are not really accurate.
Yes, there are estimates of vast amounts in the Tar Sands and the Oil Shales in North America.
The US Energy Information Agency estimated that in 1999 550 billion barrels of oil could be extracted from Tar Sands at $30 US per barrel and lower. At $40 or more per barrel 500% more can be extracted from oil fields and reserves of any type than can be when the oil is at $30 US per barrel.
The total size of Shale Oil as of 1999 was estimated to be 242 times the amount of conventional petroleum reserves. There is up to 8 times more Shale Oil than petroleum, natural gas, coal, peat and tar sands combined.
I have a minor in Geology and recently took a class on Geology and World Affairs, the Professor has his Ph.D in Petroleum Geology and worked in the field for around 30 years with a focus on the North Sea and Texas Oil. That professor also professed the Peak Oil theory, however a problem with him, and other Petroleum Geologists with a focus on "rock oil" is an over specialzation on "rock oil". When I asked during our discussions on Peak Oil about Tar Sands or Oil Shales, I was told that "...if it don't come up through a pipe most Petroleum Geologists don't know a damned thing about it." And that in particular, this Professor with his 30 years experiance didn't know a damned thing about it because that isn't what his firms worked on.
Now then, I don't know what Professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes background is, but I can see he is writing books on the subject as so has a vested and economic interest in this theory. Furthermore he seems to discount Ethanol, fuel cells, Methane hydrates, oil shale, and Nuclear power, as "shimmering dreams" so I think one needs to take what he is saying with a grain of salt since, as stated before, his vested interest to make money at this point is "peak oil".
The truth behind "rock oil" right now is that there is alot being used, and there is alot out there and there are still a good number of basins which have not been explored, including the Arctic Ocean and there is alot of oil we can recoved in "played out" areas with new techniques and with new technologies.
For a non-Culture book, The Bridge would be neat, but Against a Dark Background might even be better than Player of Games for sci-fi and Iain M. Banks books.
I'd like to see a movie of a Iain M. Banks Culture novel. Like Player of Games.
The Declaration of Colonial Rights in a Resolution is not the Constitution nor is it the UN Decleration of Human Rights. And a quotation from a Wikipedia article does not really live up to a Constitution.
Also, "You shall not steal" is sometimes interpreted as kidnapping, since there are other injunctions against stealing property in the Bible. Theft of property is forbidden elsewhere. Theft of property is not a capital offense like Murder or the other Commandments dictate.
OK, show me in the Bible, Koran, Declaration of Human Rights, Constitution, etc where you have a "god-given right to use my own property as I see fit."
Males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females, Women report attempting suicide during their lifetime about three times as often as men.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm
Suicide took the lives of 30,622 people in 2001 in the US with say around 292 million people.
127 million people in Japan, so the suicide rate in Japan is over twice that of the US.
I've been to the ER a couple times in the last 6 years, never had to pre-pay, only forms I filled out were medical background forms until later, after treatment that they asked about insurance.
Never pre-pay for treatment or appointments either, and I've been to a number of organizations, Kaiser Permenante, Mayo Clinic, Oregon Health Sciences University and private practices among others.
If the extra speed, extra cores don't do anything make the end product better for the user, in whatever the user is doing, then there isn't a point to it.
That's one of the problems with hardware/software right now, most of the software doesn't get any benefit from the speed/cores, yet the hardware makers are shoving more speed/cores down the end user's throat and keeping the price of computing higher.