You sure about that? I was under the impression that it was probably STILL expanding faster than light, if measured from edge to edge (which, of course, you can't do, but can only calculate). In fact I was under the impression that it was believed that many areas of the universe may still be rapidly inflating, just not around here.
FWIW, (and in my understanding) there are theoretical reasons to believe that inflation will continue forever. They're just beyond our light cone. Perhaps this "problem" has been generally agreed to be resolved, but if so I haven't heard about it.
The only historical connection is get to Nimrod is biblical: "Nimrod, that mighty hunter". I could look it up, but I don't remember any context. The only current connection I get it to the SF book "The Nimrod Project" in which Nimrod is used because...guess what?...they're building a super-intelligent hunter.
I do have some vague feeling that I heard it used in the way you describe once several decades ago, but I'd hardly say that such a meaning is "well recognized".
While Golden Rice is not related to Monsanto, it's my understanding that the right to use it free of patent restrictions is limited, though I don't remember the exact limitations.
N.B.: Open Source doesn't mean free of patent restrictions. It doesn't even mean free of copyright restrictions. It just means that you can read the source code.
They probably will, but only because of the way the granted monopoly control to certain corporation(s). There's nothing wrong with the basic idea of GMO foods. There's a lot wrong with allowing that kind of centralization of power.
That's not going "goody two-shoes", that's preventing the creation of rival centers of power. Possibly not enough of the investors were top party members....or were on the losing end of a power struggle.
That said, there's no reason to believe that the Chinese government doesn't occasionally act to protect their citizens. Sometimes the US government does. (Sorry, that's a bit cynical beyond the evidence.)
O, as long as it's properly licensed I like it fine. I just don't trust it, and don't need to use it. So I don't.
As for the three examples you gave.... that's the first time I've heard of any of them. If I had heard of them I wouldn't have trusted them, though, so it's no loss to me. (Did they license the use to all patents they may have included in that softtware to any derivitive software? The last time I looked at one of their "open source" projects that had unaccountably failed to do that.)
I don't find that annoying, so much as unbelievable. What surprises me is that they can still find anyone to believe them after lying so often.
OTOH, I can hope that it's true, and that they actually HAVE reformed. I'm just going to let the evidence accumulate for awhile before I believe it. Possibly in a decade....
Well, to be honest Gnome3 didn't help things any. Neither did whatever that mishmash that Ubuntu is up to. xfce isn't really slick enough for corporate work. Etc. KDE4 still isn't as good as KDE3 was, but it's definitely mainly usable, and can look as pretty as you desire.
My real guess is that they forgot what a nightmare it was to deal with MSWind, so now the problems with Linux are looming a lot larger in their minds. Please note, however, that this is just a guess.
Linux Desktop developers have pissed me off mightily in the last few years, but not enough that I'd consider going back to MS, or even back to Apple.
There were those who were sure that anyone exposed to Linux would immediately prefer it over MSWind. Most people were a bit more cautious, but figured that the city would prefer to save money and have control over its own destiny. Others have been cynical since before the plan was first announced, on various different grounds. Some people actually think that MSWind is better. Some think that the applications available under MSWind are better. Some just think that the party with more wealth and power will always win.
Anyone who pretends that there was ever unanimity here is wrong. OTOH, I really wonder what is causing the about-face at this point of the game. (Though not enough to do ANY research. Yes, I read the "The users want it" explanation, but that doesn't do much to convince any organization, so there's clearly something else happening. And it could just be one politician with a hair up his ass.)
Gross overstatement isn't the same thing as "talking out of your ass". And I'm not even sure that it was a gross overstatement, though it is clearly not true of *all* financial services companies.
That said, it's also true that there are many "honest police". But somehow the honest police never inform on the dishonest ones. Similarly, the "ethical" financial services companies don't campaign to get the rules changed that enable the unethical ones to prosper to the point where they dominate the industry. I understand that in the case of the police, each individual may have his life depend on support by any other, which may partially mitigate their reluctance. I don't understand, however, what is equivalent in the financial services sector.
You haven't been keepign track of the advances in robotics. I'll give you OB Gyns, as most women would probably be reluctant to trust a robot. (Note that this isn't capability based, but trust based.)
You ask "Why are the robots making this stuff?" The answer is "To trade with other people who also own robots that make other stuff." Each robot factory will have multiple possible products. This will come at the cost of being less efficient at the manufacture of each one, but it will mean that there's no reason to just crank through as much as you can. It will generally be "bespoke trade", i.e., you get the order before you make the stuff. (Sort of like JIT carried to the next level.)
What skilled jobs do you think will be available, that robots won't be able to do better? In what year? (Part of the problem is that it's a moving target. It can take 10 years to turn a high school graduate into a skilled professional, and at the start of those 10 years, you don't know which jobs will be available at the end. Well, one can generally make a decent mid-course correction for the first 5-6 years, so if your general area of prediction is correct, you can adopt the most promising remaining specialty. But things become a lot less flexible as you get closer to the end of training. And if your career becomes obsolete two years after you finish training, you get to start back several years, if you can get a school to take you, only now you've already got a huge debt...or, at minimum, a huge sunk cost that you need to write off.
Currently I'm really reluctant to advise kids to go to college. If they don't want to badly enough that they would go against my advice, it looks like a bad bet. Being a welder might actually be a much better choice. The training is both shorter and less expensive. People tend to have really silly ideas about what skills a robot will have 10 years from now. They will range from nearly human down to insectile, and be priced inversely. But a huge lot of what we do isn't based on intelligence, it's based on organized memory, and while it might take intelligence to organize the memory, it doesn't take much to use memories that are already organized. And robots can copy memories easily. So you need one really intelligent robot to train to do something, and the contexts in which which action is appropriate. Then you copy it to thousands of robots that are a lot less intelligent, but a lot lighter and cheaper. And that's only 10 years from now. 20 years from now is a whole different ball game. And in between then and now things aren't going to be standing still, even if I can't predict just how they will be changing.
But do note that you're talking about the velocity at which space is expanding. (Yeah, I know you know that, but I still find it confusing.) This doesn't imply anything about how objects located within space can accelerate. And since in order to get that 5x c velocity you need to be an immense number of light-years away, even contemplating talking about their relative velocities gives me a headache. I mean, if it currently looks to us as if they are moving apart at 5x c, how fast would they be moving apart in a simultaneous framework? We're only talking about three objects, so it should be possible to calculate such a framework, if we presume that no gross disaster has happened while we couldn't observe them because of time lag. IIUC that 5x c relative velocity was calculated based on current observations, but since they are so far away, and space has continued expanding during the time that light was on it's way here, they're probably moving apart much faster than that in "current" time (which, admittely, cannot be observed).
There is also the assumption that the chip structure is 2-D. This is already not totally true, though there are tremendous heat problems as you start stacking layers. This is one of the attractions of "spintronics"...state can be switched with less heat.
That's quite an "egocentric" viewpoint you have. The universe doesn't need people, it allows them to exist. If they choose to. Or the species can comit suicide. The universe won't care. It may even hit the planet with a "large enough" asteroid. But it won't be malice, it will be, perhaps, indifference. Except that "the universe" isn't sentient enough to even be indifferent.
OTOH, that's just what the evidence I've seen says to me. I'd be quite open to any actual evidence that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that an assertion doesn't count.
P.S.: There may well be some non-evidential thing that does care. As specified that is neither evidence for nor against it.
P.P.S.: Here's my take on "what the universe is" if you want to go with a non-consensusal definition: The very concept of the universe was defined in terms of what is plausible given available evidence. This is why what it means changes when the evidence changes. Once upon a time it didn't include "dark matter" or "dark energy" (whatever they are). Then evidence for their existence was detected, and then the universe included them. Before the evidence appeared, nobody had even THOUGHT of them. They are still both big question marks, basically just markers saying "Here there be dragons", but not specifying much about the nature of those dragons.
P.S.: There ARE giant sea monsters. The ones large enough to worry about in a modern ship, however, aren't animals. They're things called "rogue waves", and we're just starting to understand them. Perhaps there are still others we haven't identified yet. If so they'll be quite surprising, and very rare.
OK, let me put it this way. 200 years ago someone said "The Freedom of the Press belongs to the man who owns one." Can you generalize from that? Perhaps in 200 years everyone will be able to afford their own factory, but I expect some really rough patches before then. Low end "3D printers" can only really turn out toys and junk. It takes the ones that can print in multiple metals to create something worthwhile. And even they aren't that good yet. The most practical home robot so far is the Roomba. But we've got apprentice robots working for the military. They aren't really good yet, but they're improving rapidly. But they aren't cheap. You don't buy a "Big Dog" to carry your shopping home for you. Not even if you're confined to a wheelchair.
Robot make stuff that basically for free to the person who owns the robit. (Well, plus cost of materials, shipping, handling, accounting, etc. Which are also robotized, but which still cost.) So the production cost has decreased substantially. But who is earning the money to buy that stuff? Only the guy that owns the robots or delivers the merchandise...but robot truck drivers are on the horizon, and robot warehouses are already here.
If prices drop by 50% and the mean wage stays the same, but the median drops by 60%, what does that mean for the average person being able to buy what they need? (Hint: The minimum wage possible is zero, but there is no upper limit.)
Now IF the government actually intended to promote the general welfare, then I would be happy and confident. This would look like the opening of a golden age. But I have seen VERY few signs that the government even considers the general welfare. So I don't feel happy about it at all.
Perhaps you would care to identify some of them? I admit that I'm at a loss, but then I don't even want most current consumer gizmos.
FWIW, I think we would be much better off with a social restructuring that reduced the work week, initially, to 24 hours/week and hired more people to fill in the jobs opened up. This should be accompanied by free public colleges for those who want to take classes, with the class schedules set with the assumption that you won't study in class for more than 12 hours/week, with homework counting perhaps another 12. This is for those who want to improve either themselves or their careers. While anyone who desired should be allowed to enroll, the classes should not be required to admit those who are unruly and disruptive. (We really need a better way to handle grade schools, too. Perhaps many of the "jobs" created could be as teacher's aides. Ideally there should be no more than 15 children/adult on the average.)
For some reason paying teachers and their aides seems to be very difficult for our current society to do. I'm not sure why, as it is perhaps the most important single job in society.
Money, ah yes. There is the big problem. Somehow this must be paid for, and those who control the power and wealth are reluctant to release control. Yet much of this could be paid for with the cost of a few disfunctional weapons systems. Say a moratorium on aircraft carriers and new designs for manned fighers. (Drones are going to be the next generation of fighers anyway, so it's a clear waste of money.)
The universe doesn't need ANY people. It never did. It never will.
What's your point? You mean the planet is overcrowded? I agree. We're killing off species at an unsustainable rate. But the universe doesn't care about that. I'm the one that cares. And perhaps you.
Carwling out? Who is benefitting? Is it the people who lost their houses when they lost their jobs? Is it the workers at WalMart? Who?
AFAIKT, those benefitting are an extremely small proportion of the population. Most of my friends are benefitting, at least somewhat, but, e.g., one of them makes his living installing customized wall paper in mansions where the patter must match all the way around the room. And the wallpaper often sells for $100/yard. OTOH, my wife is depending on my retirement. She normally teaches music and art, but nobody can afford that in this area right now. So instead she's essentially donating her time (the pay usually covers the material expense) teaching at the city rec center. Another is a landscape architect, and business is currently EXTREMELY slow. I guess their customers aren't upscale enough to be beneficiaries of the recovery.
I don't see any general recovery at all. I see isolated pockets of partial recovery...and they often don't look as if they're going to be able to maintain their recovery.
What it looks like to me is that certain areas of businesses have had a significant recovery. Others are hanging in there. Others are significantly depressed, and show no signs of recovery.
FWIW, this seems exacerbated by several governmental policies, but the primary problem (aside from automation) is the increasing cost of energy. This doesn't mean that automation isn't a real problem, but to me it seems as if, at least locally, that's not yet the major problem. This doesn't mean it's not a problem, and a growing one at that. But it didn't cause the recession, and it's only slowing the recovery. Give it a few years before it becomes the major problem.
There's usually only one pandemic of flu per year, though I don't believe that there's a rule about it. However just because it killed thousands doesn't mean much when the population is as large as it is. I would guess that most people who caught it (assuming it was a pandemic) were mildly sick for a few days, some people had a bit worse case, and one in a million died of it and was counted.
FWIW, I don't really remember the 2009 swine flu, and that's only 5 years ago, so it can't have been very noticable...in the US. My wife's mother was already frail and around 90, and she's still around, so it can't have been all that devastating. OTOH, this doesn't mean that when crossed with another strain it wouldn't be highly contagious bad news. If it was a pandemic, then it is good at spreading among humans, even if it's usually so mild that they don't notice it.
Good things definitely can, and have, come out of this kind of research. But it's walking along close to the edge of a high cliff. Sometims it feels as if they are seeing how close to the edge they can walk without falling over.
That's a tricky one. I'm told that my usage, to signify phrases and pauses, is incorrect. Nobody has been able to explain what correct usage is, however. So I still use them, commas, to signify phrases or pauses (or changes in emphasis).
I'm not sure that it's exactly a weapon. It's hard to control, it's hard to aim, and it's hard to keep it from attacking *you* if you use it on someone else. O, and your population doesn't have a greater immunity than does anyone else's. (Smallpox and measles were used as weapons by US settlers against the Indians...but they were *relatively* immune.)
So I don't think it's a biological weapon. Just an insanely dangerous piece of biological research. And a good argument for a base on the moon where such experiments can be safely contained.
Not attempted murder, because he didn't attempt to release the virus, and had no intention of doing so. Even if it were released, and he was responsible for the deaths, it wouldn't be murder. Manslaughter, perhaps. As it is it's closer to "reckless endangerment" (a more general class that includes reckless driving as a subclass).
The problem would be proving that he acted recklessly. I accept that this is probable, given the history of biology lab accidents. (Wasn't it earlier this month that someone found some weaponized anthrax abandoned in a closet?)
Personally, however, I would question the sanity of the researcher and each and every one of his superiors who authorized the research.
No, I don't feel OK now. I feel as if I were living in Rome about 5 years before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. (And if you think that wasn't a despotism, read your history. It was an oligarchical despotism, with more legal structure behind it than the US one. The republic essentially died after the war between Marius and Sulla, even if I never can keep them straight.)
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You sure about that? I was under the impression that it was probably STILL expanding faster than light, if measured from edge to edge (which, of course, you can't do, but can only calculate). In fact I was under the impression that it was believed that many areas of the universe may still be rapidly inflating, just not around here.
FWIW, (and in my understanding) there are theoretical reasons to believe that inflation will continue forever. They're just beyond our light cone. Perhaps this "problem" has been generally agreed to be resolved, but if so I haven't heard about it.
OTOH, I am not a cosmologist.
The only historical connection is get to Nimrod is biblical: "Nimrod, that mighty hunter". I could look it up, but I don't remember any context. The only current connection I get it to the SF book "The Nimrod Project" in which Nimrod is used because...guess what?...they're building a super-intelligent hunter.
I do have some vague feeling that I heard it used in the way you describe once several decades ago, but I'd hardly say that such a meaning is "well recognized".
While Golden Rice is not related to Monsanto, it's my understanding that the right to use it free of patent restrictions is limited, though I don't remember the exact limitations.
N.B.: Open Source doesn't mean free of patent restrictions. It doesn't even mean free of copyright restrictions. It just means that you can read the source code.
They probably will, but only because of the way the granted monopoly control to certain corporation(s). There's nothing wrong with the basic idea of GMO foods. There's a lot wrong with allowing that kind of centralization of power.
That's not going "goody two-shoes", that's preventing the creation of rival centers of power. Possibly not enough of the investors were top party members....or were on the losing end of a power struggle.
That said, there's no reason to believe that the Chinese government doesn't occasionally act to protect their citizens. Sometimes the US government does. (Sorry, that's a bit cynical beyond the evidence.)
O, as long as it's properly licensed I like it fine. I just don't trust it, and don't need to use it. So I don't.
As for the three examples you gave....
that's the first time I've heard of any of them. If I had heard of them I wouldn't have trusted them, though, so it's no loss to me. (Did they license the use to all patents they may have included in that softtware to any derivitive software? The last time I looked at one of their "open source" projects that had unaccountably failed to do that.)
I don't find that annoying, so much as unbelievable. What surprises me is that they can still find anyone to believe them after lying so often.
OTOH, I can hope that it's true, and that they actually HAVE reformed. I'm just going to let the evidence accumulate for awhile before I believe it. Possibly in a decade....
Well, to be honest Gnome3 didn't help things any. Neither did whatever that mishmash that Ubuntu is up to. xfce isn't really slick enough for corporate work. Etc. KDE4 still isn't as good as KDE3 was, but it's definitely mainly usable, and can look as pretty as you desire.
My real guess is that they forgot what a nightmare it was to deal with MSWind, so now the problems with Linux are looming a lot larger in their minds. Please note, however, that this is just a guess.
Linux Desktop developers have pissed me off mightily in the last few years, but not enough that I'd consider going back to MS, or even back to Apple.
There were those who were sure that anyone exposed to Linux would immediately prefer it over MSWind. Most people were a bit more cautious, but figured that the city would prefer to save money and have control over its own destiny. Others have been cynical since before the plan was first announced, on various different grounds. Some people actually think that MSWind is better. Some think that the applications available under MSWind are better. Some just think that the party with more wealth and power will always win.
Anyone who pretends that there was ever unanimity here is wrong. OTOH, I really wonder what is causing the about-face at this point of the game. (Though not enough to do ANY research. Yes, I read the "The users want it" explanation, but that doesn't do much to convince any organization, so there's clearly something else happening. And it could just be one politician with a hair up his ass.)
Gross overstatement isn't the same thing as "talking out of your ass". And I'm not even sure that it was a gross overstatement, though it is clearly not true of *all* financial services companies.
That said, it's also true that there are many "honest police". But somehow the honest police never inform on the dishonest ones. Similarly, the "ethical" financial services companies don't campaign to get the rules changed that enable the unethical ones to prosper to the point where they dominate the industry. I understand that in the case of the police, each individual may have his life depend on support by any other, which may partially mitigate their reluctance. I don't understand, however, what is equivalent in the financial services sector.
My first thought was "Idiot". Then I noticed your sign in, Anonymous Coward, and revised that to troll.
You haven't been keepign track of the advances in robotics. I'll give you OB Gyns, as most women would probably be reluctant to trust a robot. (Note that this isn't capability based, but trust based.)
You ask "Why are the robots making this stuff?" The answer is "To trade with other people who also own robots that make other stuff." Each robot factory will have multiple possible products. This will come at the cost of being less efficient at the manufacture of each one, but it will mean that there's no reason to just crank through as much as you can. It will generally be "bespoke trade", i.e., you get the order before you make the stuff. (Sort of like JIT carried to the next level.)
What skilled jobs do you think will be available, that robots won't be able to do better? In what year? (Part of the problem is that it's a moving target. It can take 10 years to turn a high school graduate into a skilled professional, and at the start of those 10 years, you don't know which jobs will be available at the end. Well, one can generally make a decent mid-course correction for the first 5-6 years, so if your general area of prediction is correct, you can adopt the most promising remaining specialty. But things become a lot less flexible as you get closer to the end of training. And if your career becomes obsolete two years after you finish training, you get to start back several years, if you can get a school to take you, only now you've already got a huge debt...or, at minimum, a huge sunk cost that you need to write off.
Currently I'm really reluctant to advise kids to go to college. If they don't want to badly enough that they would go against my advice, it looks like a bad bet. Being a welder might actually be a much better choice. The training is both shorter and less expensive. People tend to have really silly ideas about what skills a robot will have 10 years from now. They will range from nearly human down to insectile, and be priced inversely. But a huge lot of what we do isn't based on intelligence, it's based on organized memory, and while it might take intelligence to organize the memory, it doesn't take much to use memories that are already organized. And robots can copy memories easily. So you need one really intelligent robot to train to do something, and the contexts in which which action is appropriate. Then you copy it to thousands of robots that are a lot less intelligent, but a lot lighter and cheaper. And that's only 10 years from now. 20 years from now is a whole different ball game. And in between then and now things aren't going to be standing still, even if I can't predict just how they will be changing.
But do note that you're talking about the velocity at which space is expanding. (Yeah, I know you know that, but I still find it confusing.) This doesn't imply anything about how objects located within space can accelerate. And since in order to get that 5x c velocity you need to be an immense number of light-years away, even contemplating talking about their relative velocities gives me a headache. I mean, if it currently looks to us as if they are moving apart at 5x c, how fast would they be moving apart in a simultaneous framework? We're only talking about three objects, so it should be possible to calculate such a framework, if we presume that no gross disaster has happened while we couldn't observe them because of time lag. IIUC that 5x c relative velocity was calculated based on current observations, but since they are so far away, and space has continued expanding during the time that light was on it's way here, they're probably moving apart much faster than that in "current" time (which, admittely, cannot be observed).
There is also the assumption that the chip structure is 2-D. This is already not totally true, though there are tremendous heat problems as you start stacking layers. This is one of the attractions of "spintronics"...state can be switched with less heat.
That's quite an "egocentric" viewpoint you have. The universe doesn't need people, it allows them to exist. If they choose to. Or the species can comit suicide. The universe won't care. It may even hit the planet with a "large enough" asteroid. But it won't be malice, it will be, perhaps, indifference. Except that "the universe" isn't sentient enough to even be indifferent.
OTOH, that's just what the evidence I've seen says to me. I'd be quite open to any actual evidence that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that an assertion doesn't count.
P.S.: There may well be some non-evidential thing that does care. As specified that is neither evidence for nor against it.
P.P.S.: Here's my take on "what the universe is" if you want to go with a non-consensusal definition: The very concept of the universe was defined in terms of what is plausible given available evidence. This is why what it means changes when the evidence changes. Once upon a time it didn't include "dark matter" or "dark energy" (whatever they are). Then evidence for their existence was detected, and then the universe included them. Before the evidence appeared, nobody had even THOUGHT of them. They are still both big question marks, basically just markers saying "Here there be dragons", but not specifying much about the nature of those dragons.
P.S.: There ARE giant sea monsters. The ones large enough to worry about in a modern ship, however, aren't animals. They're things called "rogue waves", and we're just starting to understand them. Perhaps there are still others we haven't identified yet. If so they'll be quite surprising, and very rare.
OK, let me put it this way. 200 years ago someone said "The Freedom of the Press belongs to the man who owns one." Can you generalize from that? Perhaps in 200 years everyone will be able to afford their own factory, but I expect some really rough patches before then. Low end "3D printers" can only really turn out toys and junk. It takes the ones that can print in multiple metals to create something worthwhile. And even they aren't that good yet. The most practical home robot so far is the Roomba. But we've got apprentice robots working for the military. They aren't really good yet, but they're improving rapidly. But they aren't cheap. You don't buy a "Big Dog" to carry your shopping home for you. Not even if you're confined to a wheelchair.
Robot make stuff that basically for free to the person who owns the robit. (Well, plus cost of materials, shipping, handling, accounting, etc. Which are also robotized, but which still cost.) So the production cost has decreased substantially. But who is earning the money to buy that stuff? Only the guy that owns the robots or delivers the merchandise...but robot truck drivers are on the horizon, and robot warehouses are already here.
If prices drop by 50% and the mean wage stays the same, but the median drops by 60%, what does that mean for the average person being able to buy what they need? (Hint: The minimum wage possible is zero, but there is no upper limit.)
Now IF the government actually intended to promote the general welfare, then I would be happy and confident. This would look like the opening of a golden age. But I have seen VERY few signs that the government even considers the general welfare. So I don't feel happy about it at all.
Perhaps you would care to identify some of them? I admit that I'm at a loss, but then I don't even want most current consumer gizmos.
FWIW, I think we would be much better off with a social restructuring that reduced the work week, initially, to 24 hours/week and hired more people to fill in the jobs opened up. This should be accompanied by free public colleges for those who want to take classes, with the class schedules set with the assumption that you won't study in class for more than 12 hours/week, with homework counting perhaps another 12. This is for those who want to improve either themselves or their careers. While anyone who desired should be allowed to enroll, the classes should not be required to admit those who are unruly and disruptive. (We really need a better way to handle grade schools, too. Perhaps many of the "jobs" created could be as teacher's aides. Ideally there should be no more than 15 children/adult on the average.)
For some reason paying teachers and their aides seems to be very difficult for our current society to do. I'm not sure why, as it is perhaps the most important single job in society.
Money, ah yes. There is the big problem. Somehow this must be paid for, and those who control the power and wealth are reluctant to release control. Yet much of this could be paid for with the cost of a few disfunctional weapons systems. Say a moratorium on aircraft carriers and new designs for manned fighers. (Drones are going to be the next generation of fighers anyway, so it's a clear waste of money.)
The universe doesn't need ANY people. It never did. It never will.
What's your point? You mean the planet is overcrowded? I agree. We're killing off species at an unsustainable rate. But the universe doesn't care about that. I'm the one that cares. And perhaps you.
Carwling out? Who is benefitting? Is it the people who lost their houses when they lost their jobs? Is it the workers at WalMart? Who?
AFAIKT, those benefitting are an extremely small proportion of the population. Most of my friends are benefitting, at least somewhat, but, e.g., one of them makes his living installing customized wall paper in mansions where the patter must match all the way around the room. And the wallpaper often sells for $100/yard. OTOH, my wife is depending on my retirement. She normally teaches music and art, but nobody can afford that in this area right now. So instead she's essentially donating her time (the pay usually covers the material expense) teaching at the city rec center. Another is a landscape architect, and business is currently EXTREMELY slow. I guess their customers aren't upscale enough to be beneficiaries of the recovery.
I don't see any general recovery at all. I see isolated pockets of partial recovery...and they often don't look as if they're going to be able to maintain their recovery.
What it looks like to me is that certain areas of businesses have had a significant recovery. Others are hanging in there. Others are significantly depressed, and show no signs of recovery.
FWIW, this seems exacerbated by several governmental policies, but the primary problem (aside from automation) is the increasing cost of energy. This doesn't mean that automation isn't a real problem, but to me it seems as if, at least locally, that's not yet the major problem. This doesn't mean it's not a problem, and a growing one at that. But it didn't cause the recession, and it's only slowing the recovery. Give it a few years before it becomes the major problem.
There's usually only one pandemic of flu per year, though I don't believe that there's a rule about it. However just because it killed thousands doesn't mean much when the population is as large as it is. I would guess that most people who caught it (assuming it was a pandemic) were mildly sick for a few days, some people had a bit worse case, and one in a million died of it and was counted.
FWIW, I don't really remember the 2009 swine flu, and that's only 5 years ago, so it can't have been very noticable...in the US. My wife's mother was already frail and around 90, and she's still around, so it can't have been all that devastating.
OTOH, this doesn't mean that when crossed with another strain it wouldn't be highly contagious bad news. If it was a pandemic, then it is good at spreading among humans, even if it's usually so mild that they don't notice it.
Good things definitely can, and have, come out of this kind of research. But it's walking along close to the edge of a high cliff. Sometims it feels as if they are seeing how close to the edge they can walk without falling over.
That's a tricky one. I'm told that my usage, to signify phrases and pauses, is incorrect. Nobody has been able to explain what correct usage is, however. So I still use them, commas, to signify phrases or pauses (or changes in emphasis).
I'm not sure that it's exactly a weapon. It's hard to control, it's hard to aim, and it's hard to keep it from attacking *you* if you use it on someone else. O, and your population doesn't have a greater immunity than does anyone else's. (Smallpox and measles were used as weapons by US settlers against the Indians...but they were *relatively* immune.)
So I don't think it's a biological weapon. Just an insanely dangerous piece of biological research. And a good argument for a base on the moon where such experiments can be safely contained.
Not attempted murder, because he didn't attempt to release the virus, and had no intention of doing so. Even if it were released, and he was responsible for the deaths, it wouldn't be murder. Manslaughter, perhaps. As it is it's closer to "reckless endangerment" (a more general class that includes reckless driving as a subclass).
The problem would be proving that he acted recklessly. I accept that this is probable, given the history of biology lab accidents. (Wasn't it earlier this month that someone found some weaponized anthrax abandoned in a closet?)
Personally, however, I would question the sanity of the researcher and each and every one of his superiors who authorized the research.
No, I don't feel OK now. I feel as if I were living in Rome about 5 years before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. (And if you think that wasn't a despotism, read your history. It was an oligarchical despotism, with more legal structure behind it than the US one. The republic essentially died after the war between Marius and Sulla, even if I never can keep them straight.)