Uhhhh wouldnt you want the break on the back wheel if youre only going to have one of them? I mean im all for stopping power but doing an endo isnt my favorite means of coming to a halt.
While I don't ride a fixed gear bike or race, I do use a bike as my main form of transportation. I rarely use my rear brake at all and might consider removing it entirely. I occasionally use it for drag on long downhills to give my front brake hand and pads a rest. Its also useful in panic stops as it provides a slight addition to the stopping power of the front wheel.
The way to avoid an endo while using the front brake is to learn the feel of your bike well enough to back off on the brake lever before the front wheel locks up. On a bike you are the ABS system.
Do you also support compulsory seat-belt laws for drivers and passengers in motor vehicles?
No.
I don't really understand why you would not support mandatory helmet laws, particularly if you think helmet use is a good idea. Genuinely interested in your reasons.
Weirdo American libertarianism I guess. I don't have a problem asking people to do the right thing for themselves, I do have a problem with the government requiring them to. Basicly it's a question of "what's next?". After all the politicians will always be looking for something to show how they care about public safety. Next thing you know and every adult is in effect a ward of the state with fewer rights than a foster child has now.
On the other hand, if you need to buy a lot of stuff at once (like getting basic furniture for your new, empty house) you will need a loan anyway. You can get it from a bank, but that means paperwork and waiting for the bank's decision. On the other hand, if you have a credit card with a decent limit (mine is $6000) you don't have to deal with the red tape anymore.
Retailers of big-ticket items such as furniture or appliances often offer their own credit arrangements. Often this will have more favorable terms and be easier to get than a credit card or unsecured bank loan.
And I'm here to tell you that you're 100% wrong. It's only a necessity if you can't stay upright.
Not necessarily. Even experienced road riders dump their bikes from time to time. Shit happens.
The last time for me was 4 years ago. I was riding in heavy city traffic, I had to swerve suddenly to avoid a driver running a red light. My rear wheel broke traction on a wet manhole cover. I smacked into pavement hard enough to crack my helmet in half. Fortunately I managed to get out of the way of the idiot running the light and escaped with nothing more than a few bruses and a smashed helmet.
For people who ride off-road falling seems to be part of the point and is certainly more common than among road riders.
The parent poster made comments to the effect that in the USA, only people with $$$ (~$100!?!) can afford them.
I don't know where the parent poster got his numbers. You can get a brand new CPSC certified helmet in the US for as little as $15 USD.
The only reason to pay more is for lighter weight and increased comfort.
In Australia, we have mandatory bicycle helmet laws, and all helmets must be certified to the national standard.
No national manditory bicycle or motorcycle helmet laws in the US but many state and local jurisdictions require them. Where I live we have manditory bicycle helmet laws but they are rarely enforced.
All bicycle helmets sold in the use have to meet US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) standards.
Still, while I wear a helmet every time I ride, I oppose manditory helmet laws for either bicycles or motorcycles.
Snow is generally softer than the front of an oncoming bus, and the probability of being sideswiped by two tons of barely-controlled 4x4 is considerably lower on the piste than it is on busy roads during rush-hour.
On ski slopes you can smash into rocks, trees, lift towers, and other skiers, people die or seriously injure themselves every day skiing. For that matter packed snow and ice can be nearly as hard as concrete. This is why many competitive skiing and snowboarding events are starting to require everyone wear helmets.
On the other hand a bike helmet only protects your head and doesn't do a heck of a lot of good at high speeds. If you are about to have a head-on collision with a bus while on a bicycle you've got bigger problems then worring about if you're wearing a helmet or not. Since a bicyclist is pretty much screwed if he gets hit by a car, the best thing to do is to learn how to ride well enough to avoid accidents. Be seen, always pay attention to what is going on around you, obey all traffic laws, ride defensively, be in control of your bike, and you can avoid most accidents.
For what its worth I do wear a helmet when I ride.
Modern internal gear hubs are well sealed against dirt and grit. This is one of the reason they are popular among some mountain bike riders along with not having a derailleur to break or snag on things.
The big disadvantages of modern internal gear hubs are increased weight, cost (the Rohloff hub starts at $850), and lack of flexiblity compared to conventional derailleur systems.
Phh, IBM has a reputation for being a very litigious company that isn't afraid to sue smaller competitors to death, a lot like MS. They just don't take as much shit for it because they're in a very different position than MS is. Most people wouldn't call that kind of reputation "good", and it's certainly bad for SCO, which in this case is good for us.
First of all most of the litigation initiated by IBM I'm aware of has to do with them defending their huge library of patents. Say what you will about the patent system, but this is a very different thing than the allegations SCO is making.
IBM most assuredly does have a reputation for honoring the letter of contracts, confidentiality agreements, and not intentionally infringing on others intellectual property. Given the amount of other people's sensitive data IBM deals with on a daily basis they simply cannot afford to allow SCO to win this lawsuit in any way shape or form. SCO, via their wild-ass public statements and press releases has created a smear that IBM can remove only by utterly crushing SCO in court.
While IBM may be involved in these sort of suits all the time, usually the other side is smart enough not to discuss pending litigation every time a reporter is in earshot. Thus other lawsuits don't cause massive damage to IBM's reputation.
This is mildly offtopic, but has SCO made any noises or rumblings about going after the wider opensource unix community? any of the BSDs, Apple, gnu/darwin etc?
They did indeed. I don't have the link at the moment but Darl popped off earlier this year about going after BSD, Apple, and possibly Microsoft. The suspicion is he somehow thought SCO could claim rights to the BSD code.
I guess someone finally told him about the terms of the USG vs UC settlement since he's been quiet about this for a while now. Its also suspected that BSD code may have formed a large basis for SCO's original claims against IBM and linux.
I'm guessing there won't be anything left of SCO or the Canopy Group when this is all over.
SCO's lawsuit against IBM is over a breach of contract. It doesn't mention the GPL at all. However, IBM's countersuit does bring up the GPL several times. SCO's lawsuit can be laughed out of court without affecting IBM's countersuit. From what I've heard, IBM would like a court ruling backing the GPL as much as the rest of the open source community. The chances of IBM dropping their countersuit is really small. If IBM is sending subpoenas to investors, then it sounds like IBM would like to make an example out of SCO and everyone that has helped them.
SCO made the mistake of attacking something very core to IBM's business, its reputation.
By claiming that IBM willfully and flagrantly breached its contracts with SCO and disregarded confidentiality agreements, SCO is jeprodizing IBM's business with almost every one of their customers including banks, government, and nearly every large corporation.
Not likely, IBM has a countersuit against SCO so even if SCO drops their suit, the countersuit will continue to go forward.
Interestingly enough the GPL related issues stem more from the IBM countersuit and the separate lawsuit that Redhat filed against SCO. Both suits allege that SCO is infringing on IBM and Redhat's copyrights by continuing to distribute the Linux kernel in violation of the GPL.
SCO's suit dispite all of the smoke coming out of Darl's mouth consists mostly of a contract dispute with IBM. The points in dispute are mostly a really bizzare interpretation of derivitave works and an equally bizzare interpretation of trade secret on the part of SCO.
So you would bow at the alter of IBM hoping that IBM agrees with your interpretation of the GPL? IBM could present a defense that leads the court to interpret the GPL in a manner far different than you would like.
Huh? IBM trying to get the GPL interpreted differently than is commonly understood? What planet are you on?
Go read the IBM countersuit and related filings over at Groklaw. IBM is claiming that SCO is not abiding by the terms of the distribution license for the linux kernel as set forth in the GPL, therefore SCO is infringing on IBM's copyright. Pretty much textbook as to how the FSF would like to see the GPL defended.
What's wrong with not wanting to hurt animals, not everyone's ego requires the killing of inocent animals.
I take it you've never had to deal with having your property overrun with rabbits, prarie dogs, rats, or other vermin. Using them for target practice is one way of controling them and much better for the environment than poison.
Besides rabbits at least make for pretty good eating.
Watch it, all of the PETA and anti-gun types are going to come out of the woodwork and try to tell you what a bad, evil, violent, psychopathic, dangerious person you are.
As a kid we mostly had rabbits, squirrels, and various birds to shoot at.
Finally somebody has hit exactly my most-aggravated nerve in many of these events. Who the hell made senior corporate officers or high ranking officials or secret-handshake wielding technocrats so much better than the mere citizens of the country, that they mustn't be disturbed unless we really, really, honest-to-goodness know for sure that we think we can prosecute them - all of that as opposed to, "well the TV remote kinda looked like a forged check so, we tossed him in jail?"
Couple of things here. First of all prosecutors like to win so when you are going after someone who can afford a decent lawyer you want to make sure all of the i's are dotted and t's crossed. Yes, unfortunately poor slobs relying on a public defender don't get the same consideration but such is the way of the world. Second senior corprate officers are hard to nail with anything solid because oftentimes the underlings are the ones who did all the dirty work and all the evidence points to them rather than say the CEO.
Shit, Ken Lay is still free, and not one of you angry Americans have tried to shoot his ass after he pissed away your retirement and the money for your children's education. Quite frankly, I'm dissapointed, I was kind of hoping for at least one mentally unstable dude with a rifle to go off.
I wish more people would realize that the legal system takes time. Most of these accounting fraud cases are incredibly complex. You have to have something solid before you can indight people especially senior corprate officers. Generally you have to be able to prove they not only knew about the problems but actually had a hand in creating them.
The DOJ has already gone after some of these folks and the state AG's are now getting into the act. The OK AG has charged many of the senior corprate officers of Enron. The NY AG Elliot Spitzer has been going after the investment banks and brokerage houses.
Let them loose on landfills to eat all the plastics and "piss out" gasoline. Hmm, then all the gasoline is mixed in with dirt. Need to find a way to get it out of the landfill. That damn pesky step #2...
but where does the energy to convert plastic to gasoline come from? Even if the bacteria can just "eat" plastics and "make" gasoline you have the problem that there is a limit to the availible feedstocks. Compared to global yearly oil and gas production I doubt gasoline from all of the waste plastic in the world would amount to much.
One problem that people forget when talking about alternatives to oil and gas is the sheer scale of global energy consumption.
Wait, you are trying to tell us that we are somehow running out of food even though the supply keeps increasing and the price keeps decreasing?
The problem is much of this was bought with cheap fossil fuel. That fuel isn't going to be cheap much longer. When that happens it will soon play Hell with the global economy including making food and fossil fuel derived fertilizer too expensive for a good sized hunk of the world's population.
Technology might give us an out, necessity being the mother of invention and all. But the short-term disruptions are going to be massive.
Why no just fix the Sun instead? Interstellar travel and fixing the Sun are both equally impossible right now, but it seems simpler to replenish the Sun's hydrogen, and perhaps siphon off the heavier elements and construct some new planets for excess population than creating "Warp Drive" technology.
You forget that the Sun signifigantly outmasses the rest of the solar system.
The replacement hydrogen needs to come from somewhere and I don't think the gas giants are quite enough.
We have some idea how interstellar travel might be accomplished and the physics behind it. We haven't the slightest idea how to "fix" a star.
Actually, you'll note we're using up other countries' oil first, under the ruse of protecting our own for "environmental" reasons. Once it starts to get scarce, we'll really open up Alaska, the coast of California, et al.
Actually there just isn't that much oil left in North America. The US peaked oil production in about 1970, Alaska just managed to hold the curve flat to about 1985.
There aren't likely to be any new Prudhoe Bays or Permian Basins to be discovered.
The last area of the world to peak in production will be the Middle East.
My own bet is we'll never run out of oil. The hellish demand will cause the development of oil-producing bacteria (or hell, produce gasoline directly!) Or some other chemical thing, who knows?
The problem is the energy has to come from somewhere. Even if we come up with magic bacteria they are going to have to convert the energy from some other form into either crude or refined products.
Well, we are going to have to change human nature eventually, if we want to survive alongside exponentially advancing technology where any random psychopath will be able to "press The Red Button" with exponentially decreasing effort.
I think humans are basically good when resources are abundant and life is good, but when resources are scarce (artificial or not), then the "selfish gene" goes into overdrive and people get desperate. But there's also that rare minority who have their selfish gene stuck in high gear even though they're already living like [spam]kings, because, hey, more power and more money secures *MY* genes even further, right? Screw the commons. I only care about ME and MY family and MY tribe.
"eventually" is today. The coming global oil production peak is going to cause a lot of people to freak out, unfortunately many of those people command armies or vast sums of capital.
Will the oil run out right away? No, but we will face rising prices and decreasing supply. Eventually this is likely to knock the foundations out from under the global economy as everything gets more expensive.
Worst case is much of the world will start to look like West Africa before final collapse. Best case is we manage to plug most of the holes in the dyke with improved technology.
People can teach other people what they're good at, or what they have been trained to teach. Most parents aren't good at most of the higher-level stuff that is taught in the upper-level grades of schools. And yes, that "upper-level stuff", while not needed by burger-flippers or janitors, _does_ turn out to be useful for a lot of decent jobs.
I will conceed that many people aren't equipped to teach more advanced high-school subjects. On the other hand some parents either know the subjects well enough already or are able to learn enough to teach their children effectively.
It probably has something to do with the fact that most people who don't have some kind of training for educating kids usually turn out to be incompetent at educating kids. There are exceptions, but rare ones.
That is utter bullshit. I'm sorry but if the "profeessionals" don't trust parents to teach reading, writing, and math to their own children I'm supprised they trust parents to teach children to talk or use the toilet.
For that matter without professional educators I'm supprised we were able to last as long as we did, the lions and wolves should have gotten us long ago.
Actually, I think what would work here would be some kind of bracelet that only the parents had the key to remove or something. Then, if the parents were more worried about "Big Brother" than scores of pedophiles, then they could choose to let their kid go without the bracelet.
How long before not having your child fitted with said bracelet is considered prima facie evidence of child neglect?
By the way the "pedophile" scare is way overblown. In 95% of all child sex abuse someone known to and trusted by the child is responsible. Very often it is a parent or relative, in the remaining cases it is usually someone like a babysitter, scoutmaster, preist, coach, or teacher.
The idea that pedophiles lurk in bushes or pull up in vans is for the most part hogwash. Yes it happens sometimes but the chances of your child getting struck by lightning are far higher.
Something tells me that this dude doesn't have kids. I don't either, but I interact with enough people who *do* to know that, if the kid goes missing even for a few hours, these people are going to want to know *everything* they can about the kids whereabouts.
Well I don't know about you but as young as 4 I spent time with no adult supervision, usually in the woods behind our house, or down on the beach in front. By 6 I was riding public transit alone. As I got older the length of time I could be off doing my own thing got longer. I turned out OK as did everyone else I know who was brought up the same way.
I feel really sorry for many of today's kids who basicly haven't gone unsupervised at all before they are 16 or 18.
Funny thing is when I was a kid the other kids whos parents watched them the closest were the most likely to be doing things they weren't supposed to.
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Uhhhh wouldnt you want the break on the back wheel if youre only going to have one of them? I mean im all for stopping power but doing an endo isnt my favorite means of coming to a halt.
While I don't ride a fixed gear bike or race, I do use a bike as my main form of transportation. I rarely use my rear brake at all and might consider removing it entirely. I occasionally use it for drag on long downhills to give my front brake hand and pads a rest. Its also useful in panic stops as it provides a slight addition to the stopping power of the front wheel.
The way to avoid an endo while using the front brake is to learn the feel of your bike well enough to back off on the brake lever before the front wheel locks up. On a bike you are the ABS system.
Do you also support compulsory seat-belt laws for drivers and passengers in motor vehicles?
No.
I don't really understand why you would not support mandatory helmet laws, particularly if you think helmet use is a good idea. Genuinely interested in your reasons.
Weirdo American libertarianism I guess. I don't have a problem asking people to do the right thing for themselves, I do have a problem with the government requiring them to. Basicly it's a question of "what's next?". After all the politicians will always be looking for something to show how they care about public safety. Next thing you know and every adult is in effect a ward of the state with fewer rights than a foster child has now.
On the other hand, if you need to buy a lot of stuff at once (like getting basic furniture for your new, empty house) you will need a loan anyway. You can get it from a bank, but that means paperwork and waiting for the bank's decision. On the other hand, if you have a credit card with a decent limit (mine is $6000) you don't have to deal with the red tape anymore.
Retailers of big-ticket items such as furniture or appliances often offer their own credit arrangements. Often this will have more favorable terms and be easier to get than a credit card or unsecured bank loan.
And I'm here to tell you that you're 100% wrong. It's only a necessity if you can't stay upright.
Not necessarily. Even experienced road riders dump their bikes from time to time. Shit happens.
The last time for me was 4 years ago. I was riding in heavy city traffic, I had to swerve suddenly to avoid a driver running a red light. My rear wheel broke traction on a wet manhole cover. I smacked into pavement hard enough to crack my helmet in half. Fortunately I managed to get out of the way of the idiot running the light and escaped with nothing more than a few bruses and a smashed helmet.
For people who ride off-road falling seems to be part of the point and is certainly more common than among road riders.
The parent poster made comments to the effect that in the USA, only people with $$$ (~$100!?!) can afford them.
I don't know where the parent poster got his numbers. You can get a brand new CPSC certified helmet in the US for as little as $15 USD.
The only reason to pay more is for lighter weight and increased comfort.
In Australia, we have mandatory bicycle helmet laws, and all helmets must be certified to the national standard.
No national manditory bicycle or motorcycle helmet laws in the US but many state and local jurisdictions require them. Where I live we have manditory bicycle helmet laws but they are rarely enforced.
All bicycle helmets sold in the use have to meet US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) standards.
Still, while I wear a helmet every time I ride, I oppose manditory helmet laws for either bicycles or motorcycles.
Snow is generally softer than the front of an oncoming bus, and the probability of being sideswiped by two tons of barely-controlled 4x4 is considerably lower on the piste than it is on busy roads during rush-hour.
On ski slopes you can smash into rocks, trees, lift towers, and other skiers, people die or seriously injure themselves every day skiing. For that matter packed snow and ice can be nearly as hard as concrete. This is why many competitive skiing and snowboarding events are starting to require everyone wear helmets.
On the other hand a bike helmet only protects your head and doesn't do a heck of a lot of good at high speeds. If you are about to have a head-on collision with a bus while on a bicycle you've got bigger problems then worring about if you're wearing a helmet or not. Since a bicyclist is pretty much screwed if he gets hit by a car, the best thing to do is to learn how to ride well enough to avoid accidents. Be seen, always pay attention to what is going on around you, obey all traffic laws, ride defensively, be in control of your bike, and you can avoid most accidents.
For what its worth I do wear a helmet when I ride.
Modern internal gear hubs are well sealed against dirt and grit. This is one of the reason they are popular among some mountain bike riders along with not having a derailleur to break or snag on things.
The big disadvantages of modern internal gear hubs are increased weight, cost (the Rohloff hub starts at $850), and lack of flexiblity compared to conventional derailleur systems.
Phh, IBM has a reputation for being a very litigious company that isn't afraid to sue smaller competitors to death, a lot like MS. They just don't take as much shit for it because they're in a very different position than MS is. Most people wouldn't call that kind of reputation "good", and it's certainly bad for SCO, which in this case is good for us.
First of all most of the litigation initiated by IBM I'm aware of has to do with them defending their huge library of patents. Say what you will about the patent system, but this is a very different thing than the allegations SCO is making.
IBM most assuredly does have a reputation for honoring the letter of contracts, confidentiality agreements, and not intentionally infringing on others intellectual property. Given the amount of other people's sensitive data IBM deals with on a daily basis they simply cannot afford to allow SCO to win this lawsuit in any way shape or form. SCO, via their wild-ass public statements and press releases has created a smear that IBM can remove only by utterly crushing SCO in court.
While IBM may be involved in these sort of suits all the time, usually the other side is smart enough not to discuss pending litigation every time a reporter is in earshot. Thus other lawsuits don't cause massive damage to IBM's reputation.
This is mildly offtopic, but has SCO made any noises or rumblings about going after the wider opensource unix community? any of the BSDs, Apple, gnu/darwin etc?
They did indeed. I don't have the link at the moment but Darl popped off earlier this year about going after BSD, Apple, and possibly Microsoft. The suspicion is he somehow thought SCO could claim rights to the BSD code.
I guess someone finally told him about the terms of the USG vs UC settlement since he's been quiet about this for a while now. Its also suspected that BSD code may have formed a large basis for SCO's original claims against IBM and linux.
I'm guessing there won't be anything left of SCO or the Canopy Group when this is all over.
SCO's lawsuit against IBM is over a breach of contract. It doesn't mention the GPL at all. However, IBM's countersuit does bring up the GPL several times. SCO's lawsuit can be laughed out of court without affecting IBM's countersuit. From what I've heard, IBM would like a court ruling backing the GPL as much as the rest of the open source community. The chances of IBM dropping their countersuit is really small. If IBM is sending subpoenas to investors, then it sounds like IBM would like to make an example out of SCO and everyone that has helped them.
SCO made the mistake of attacking something very core to IBM's business, its reputation.
By claiming that IBM willfully and flagrantly breached its contracts with SCO and disregarded confidentiality agreements, SCO is jeprodizing IBM's business with almost every one of their customers including banks, government, and nearly every large corporation.
No. You don't want it laughed out of court.
Not likely, IBM has a countersuit against SCO so even if SCO drops their suit, the countersuit will continue to go forward.
Interestingly enough the GPL related issues stem more from the IBM countersuit and the separate lawsuit that Redhat filed against SCO. Both suits allege that SCO is infringing on IBM and Redhat's copyrights by continuing to distribute the Linux kernel in violation of the GPL.
SCO's suit dispite all of the smoke coming out of Darl's mouth consists mostly of a contract dispute with IBM. The points in dispute are mostly a really bizzare interpretation of derivitave works and an equally bizzare interpretation of trade secret on the part of SCO.
So you would bow at the alter of IBM hoping that IBM agrees with your interpretation of the GPL? IBM could present a defense that leads the court to interpret the GPL in a manner far different than you would like.
Huh? IBM trying to get the GPL interpreted differently than is commonly understood? What planet are you on?
Go read the IBM countersuit and related filings over at Groklaw. IBM is claiming that SCO is not abiding by the terms of the distribution license for the linux kernel as set forth in the GPL, therefore SCO is infringing on IBM's copyright. Pretty much textbook as to how the FSF would like to see the GPL defended.
What's wrong with not wanting to hurt animals, not everyone's ego requires the killing of inocent animals.
I take it you've never had to deal with having your property overrun with rabbits, prarie dogs, rats, or other vermin. Using them for target practice is one way of controling them and much better for the environment than poison.
Besides rabbits at least make for pretty good eating.
Just on prairie dogs
Watch it, all of the PETA and anti-gun types are going to come out of the woodwork and try to tell you what a bad, evil, violent, psychopathic, dangerious person you are.
As a kid we mostly had rabbits, squirrels, and various birds to shoot at.
Finally somebody has hit exactly my most-aggravated nerve in many of these events. Who the hell made senior corporate officers or high ranking officials or secret-handshake wielding technocrats so much better than the mere citizens of the country, that they mustn't be disturbed unless we really, really, honest-to-goodness know for sure that we think we can prosecute them - all of that as opposed to, "well the TV remote kinda looked like a forged check so, we tossed him in jail?"
Couple of things here. First of all prosecutors like to win so when you are going after someone who can afford a decent lawyer you want to make sure all of the i's are dotted and t's crossed. Yes, unfortunately poor slobs relying on a public defender don't get the same consideration but such is the way of the world. Second senior corprate officers are hard to nail with anything solid because oftentimes the underlings are the ones who did all the dirty work and all the evidence points to them rather than say the CEO.
Shit, Ken Lay is still free, and not one of you angry Americans have tried to shoot his ass after he pissed away your retirement and the money for your children's education. Quite frankly, I'm dissapointed, I was kind of hoping for at least one mentally unstable dude with a rifle to go off.
I wish more people would realize that the legal system takes time. Most of these accounting fraud cases are incredibly complex. You have to have something solid before you can indight people especially senior corprate officers. Generally you have to be able to prove they not only knew about the problems but actually had a hand in creating them.
The DOJ has already gone after some of these folks and the state AG's are now getting into the act. The OK AG has charged many of the senior corprate officers of Enron. The NY AG Elliot Spitzer has been going after the investment banks and brokerage houses.
My Sun workstation rarely eats papers, my Windows box on the other hand ...
Let them loose on landfills to eat all the plastics and "piss out" gasoline. Hmm, then all the gasoline is mixed in with dirt. Need to find a way to get it out of the landfill. That damn pesky step #2...
but where does the energy to convert plastic to gasoline come from? Even if the bacteria can just "eat" plastics and "make" gasoline you have the problem that there is a limit to the availible feedstocks. Compared to global yearly oil and gas production I doubt gasoline from all of the waste plastic in the world would amount to much.
One problem that people forget when talking about alternatives to oil and gas is the sheer scale of global energy consumption.
Wait, you are trying to tell us that we are somehow running out of food even though the supply keeps increasing and the price keeps decreasing?
The problem is much of this was bought with cheap fossil fuel. That fuel isn't going to be cheap much longer. When that happens it will soon play Hell with the global economy including making food and fossil fuel derived fertilizer too expensive for a good sized hunk of the world's population.
Technology might give us an out, necessity being the mother of invention and all. But the short-term disruptions are going to be massive.
Why no just fix the Sun instead? Interstellar travel and fixing the Sun are both equally impossible right now, but it seems simpler to replenish the Sun's hydrogen, and perhaps siphon off the heavier elements and construct some new planets for excess population than creating "Warp Drive" technology.
You forget that the Sun signifigantly outmasses the rest of the solar system.
The replacement hydrogen needs to come from somewhere and I don't think the gas giants are quite enough.
We have some idea how interstellar travel might be accomplished and the physics behind it. We haven't the slightest idea how to "fix" a star.
Actually, you'll note we're using up other countries' oil first, under the ruse of protecting our own for "environmental" reasons. Once it starts to get scarce, we'll really open up Alaska, the coast of California, et al.
Actually there just isn't that much oil left in North America. The US peaked oil production in about 1970, Alaska just managed to hold the curve flat to about 1985.
There aren't likely to be any new Prudhoe Bays or Permian Basins to be discovered.
The last area of the world to peak in production will be the Middle East.
My own bet is we'll never run out of oil. The hellish demand will cause the development of oil-producing bacteria (or hell, produce gasoline directly!) Or some other chemical thing, who knows?
The problem is the energy has to come from somewhere. Even if we come up with magic bacteria they are going to have to convert the energy from some other form into either crude or refined products.
Well, we are going to have to change human nature eventually, if we want to survive alongside exponentially advancing technology where any random psychopath will be able to "press The Red Button" with exponentially decreasing effort.
I think humans are basically good when resources are abundant and life is good, but when resources are scarce (artificial or not), then the "selfish gene" goes into overdrive and people get desperate. But there's also that rare minority who have their selfish gene stuck in high gear even though they're already living like [spam]kings, because, hey, more power and more money secures *MY* genes even further, right? Screw the commons. I only care about ME and MY family and MY tribe.
"eventually" is today. The coming global oil production peak is going to cause a lot of people to freak out, unfortunately many of those people command armies or vast sums of capital.
Will the oil run out right away? No, but we will face rising prices and decreasing supply. Eventually this is likely to knock the foundations out from under the global economy as everything gets more expensive.
Worst case is much of the world will start to look like West Africa before final collapse. Best case is we manage to plug most of the holes in the dyke with improved technology.
People can teach other people what they're good at, or what they have been trained to teach. Most parents aren't good at most of the higher-level stuff that is taught in the upper-level grades of schools. And yes, that "upper-level stuff", while not needed by burger-flippers or janitors, _does_ turn out to be useful for a lot of decent jobs.
I will conceed that many people aren't equipped to teach more advanced high-school subjects. On the other hand some parents either know the subjects well enough already or are able to learn enough to teach their children effectively.
It probably has something to do with the fact that most people who don't have some kind of training for educating kids usually turn out to be incompetent at educating kids. There are exceptions, but rare ones.
That is utter bullshit. I'm sorry but if the "profeessionals" don't trust parents to teach reading, writing, and math to their own children I'm supprised they trust parents to teach children to talk or use the toilet.
For that matter without professional educators I'm supprised we were able to last as long as we did, the lions and wolves should have gotten us long ago.
Actually, I think what would work here would be some kind of bracelet that only the parents had the key to remove or something. Then, if the parents were more worried about "Big Brother" than scores of pedophiles, then they could choose to let their kid go without the bracelet.
How long before not having your child fitted with said bracelet is considered prima facie evidence of child neglect?
By the way the "pedophile" scare is way overblown. In 95% of all child sex abuse someone known to and trusted by the child is responsible. Very often it is a parent or relative, in the remaining cases it is usually someone like a babysitter, scoutmaster, preist, coach, or teacher.
The idea that pedophiles lurk in bushes or pull up in vans is for the most part hogwash. Yes it happens sometimes but the chances of your child getting struck by lightning are far higher.
Something tells me that this dude doesn't have kids. I don't either, but I interact with enough people who *do* to know that, if the kid goes missing even for a few hours, these people are going to want to know *everything* they can about the kids whereabouts.
Well I don't know about you but as young as 4 I spent time with no adult supervision, usually in the woods behind our house, or down on the beach in front. By 6 I was riding public transit alone. As I got older the length of time I could be off doing my own thing got longer. I turned out OK as did everyone else I know who was brought up the same way.
I feel really sorry for many of today's kids who basicly haven't gone unsupervised at all before they are 16 or 18.
Funny thing is when I was a kid the other kids whos parents watched them the closest were the most likely to be doing things they weren't supposed to.