The energy is not higher for the projectile, it is the same as for the rifle.
How one can bring up the correct formulas and draw so stupid conclusions is beyond me.
The momentum is identical for projectile and rifle. The energy is not. Allow me to demonstrate.
Suppose a projectile of 15g, going at 500m/s, and a weapon of 500g. These are approximate figures to make life easy for us. Conservation of momentum means m1v1=m2v2, which means that the momentum of this projectile must equal the momentum of the pistol that launched it..015kg*500m/s = 7.5 kg m/s =.5kg*15m/s. Got it? Now we know the velocity and mass of both objects in the system, we can easily calculate the energy.
KE actually is 1/2mv^2 if we want to get some real values for this.
So, for the pistol -> 1/2*.5kg*(15m/s)^2 = 56.25 J
For the bullet -> 1/2*.015kg*(500m/s)^2 = 1875 J
I welcome you to draw whatever conclusions (stupid or otherwise) you would like, but it seems quite obvious that the energy in both cases is not, in fact, identical. Feel free to offer specific criticism about my calculations if you believe I have made an error. If you would like me to educate you further about basic physics, respond, and I would be delighted.
Yes, but the bruise is because the force is high since the projectile is slowed down very quickly. A thicker vest that allowed more penetration (without complete penetration, of course!) would be more forgiving for the wearer.
There is truth to both. KE = mv^2, whereas Momentum = mv. So, conservation of momentum and Newton's laws (equal and opposite force) means that the momentum of the rifle and momentum of the projectile are the same, but the energy of the bullet is much higher. Also, the longer distance you take to slow something down, the less force will be exerted. (F=ma, low acceleration means low force). So the rifle is heavy and long, which means the bullet gets far more energy and takes a proportionally long path to speed up, while on the other end the bullet is stopped in a very short distance and so still deposits a lot of energy very suddenly. If you could slow the bullet down gradually (a Michelin man sort of body armor, perhaps) the force could be greatly reduced.
Listen, I appreciate that you think the Democrats are the problem, and the Republicans are the solution, but the reality is that they are both the problem, because they are both primarily working for corporate donors. I like to see the Republicans in a tight spot, but not because I love the Democrats - more because it is always good to shake things up, and because Republicans of the past have been a pretty inspiring bunch, and that could give them incentive to return to their roots - sticking up for the common man, protecting freedom in real ways (civil rights, etc).
Feminists != democratic party. Plus, you had to reach back 2 administrations to find a (fairly weak) example. The other examples you gave also demonstrated my point: that republicans are divided on this issue - Chris Christie is supporting the regulation (which favors local dealerships who are almost certainly massive donors). Rubio and Perry are against it to try to gain favor of the republican anti-reg ideologues. Things like the repeal of Glass-Steagall were massively beneficial to Wall-street speculators who now had free reign to gamble with previously protected bank money. Getting rid of environmental regulation is a huge boon to many industries for whom it is very profitable to dump waste in rivers and strip huge swaths of the natural landscape with cheap but destructive mining practices.
When it comes to big influencers like the religious right, though, there is no hesitance to regulate marriage, or abortion, or drug use. This is starting to shift thanks to the increasing influence of libertarians, but that's what I'm saying: there are internal inconsistencies within the platform of the right, and Elon Musk's companies are highlighting them. It's going to be tough on the party to figure out how to find its identity coming through this (and the big demographic shifts happening), but it is also an opportunity to take a huge step in the right direction.
I won't argue about your "Case 1", because, while I think it is flawed, it has a certain merit. However your "Case 2" is a pure strawman. The Republican stance has NEVER been that all regulation is bad. The Republican stance is that regulation is often bad and has often been introduced to "solve" problems created by previously existing regulations.
Tomato, tomahto. There are some tremendously beneficial things (like Glass-Steagall) that have been repealed in the voracious cries of the right for deregulation. The case of Tesla vs. Car Dealers absolutely reveals the truth behind the rhetoric: that Republicans want a regulatory environment that favors their buddies, regardless of whether that is more or less regulation.
Not saying that the democrats are different - just that they don't try as much to pitch themselves as ideological hardliners, and so the left isn't caught in these contortions as much.
Seriously - Tesla and SpaceX have both turned republican ideology on its head.
Case 1: republicans love the military-industrial complex and always protect their cost-plus pork for defense contractors, while simultaneously claiming to support fiscal responsibility and free-market competition. Once someone shows up actually wanting free market competition in these giant aerospace contracts, the republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Case 2: the republican stance is that all regulation is bad. So is environmentalism, and government loans. Rich people are awesome though, and deserve tax cuts and celebration for all the glorious good they do for the economy. Enter Tesla - a product targeted squarely at the upper end of middle class and higher, which is environmentally minded, got started with renewable energy loans, and which is stirring up areas where regulation legitimately is disrupting market efficiency.
The contortions the republican party has to go through to try to reconcile the inconsistencies highlighted by these companies are hilarious, and representative of the entire redefinition the party is going through. I'm hoping they'll get trounced by the dems another time or two and then emerge as something worthy of sharing a name with the party of Eisenhower, Roosevelt and Lincoln.
And --- even if it did, look at what people with too much time on hands do to this world: crime, gangs, terrorists, cults, drug users --- most of societies ills are AVOIDED by making these people have jobs so they don't have free time.
I don't think that anybody ever starts a life of crime, gang membership, terrorism, etc because they are just so freaking BORED. I think it is more like people who are economically desperate are willing to try morally suspect activities to escape their dire situations. After all, which demographic has "too much time on their hands", characteristically? Retirees. I don't see roaming gangs of geriatrics running around causing mayhem...
Citation needed. There's nothing to suggest that willful ignorance, superstition, and religion haven't been part of humanity all along, and they haven't managed to destroy us yet. Not saying that they can't, but that they haven't and there is no indication that our current stupidity epidemic is worse than it historically has been. Stupidity and superstition might even have been advantageous and contributed to our success as a species (indeed, the fact that those genes are still with us suggests that they conferred benefits in some situations.)
This is spot on. I taught for a short while, and I would say that the most involved parents often had the most dependent students. Helping with homework kind of defeats the purpose unless it is done very carefully - the point is for students to learn to do work independently, and if parents are always providing help (and even motivation!) then students will flounder whenever that crutch is removed.
The bible as a work of literature has its exemplary moments, and I would encourage everyone to read it, from start to finish. But as a book on morality it is severely lacking in that you can never tell what to take literally, and what to not take literally. I guess use your own judgement? Well, you don't need the bible to do that.
It depends on what you mean by a "book of morality". The bible is primarily a narrative, containing stories of people failing, succeeding, and generally exploring every point on the spectrum between good and evil. Aesop's Fables, or other "moral" works also contain good and evil characters - not everything that happens is meant as an example of how to behave. There's a new branch of theology emerging around that fact - the bible is not, in fact, a book of moral instruction, but a book of stories, some of which are explicitly fictional. Why would a god choose to communicate to us through stories? It's an interesting question, IMO.
That said, the various genocides within the old testament are problematic. Nobody who is morally honest can say that a just god would ever command such a thing. Biblical scholars tend to treat it as some mixture of revisionism/unreliable narration - the Israelites commit genocide, and then use God to justify their actions.
It's a complicated text. Some people find a lot of beauty and value in it, and the new testament in particular contains some statements that are absolutely revolutionary and inspiring. These things are mostly ignored by the modern church.
If you know you want to program, start laying out the groundwork for that to happen. See if there are things that can be automated/tackled with scripting in your current workplace. Find a way to start taking some community college (or the European equivalent?) programming classes to get a feel for things and see if you would really want to do it. Spend some of your free time doing tutorials, building your own programs for fun, or helping out on some open source effort.
Getting a degree is nice because it gets you past the HR gauntlet at many firms, and you have a lot more choice in jobs you can apply for. It corresponds pretty well to a pay increase - ROI is still pretty good on most tech degrees, and the earlier you get that degree out of the way the better. It isn't impossible to do what you want to do without a degree, but it certainly helps.
The big thing, though, is if you know what you want to do, start pursuing it. Take some step to make it happen. You have 6 months, which is plenty of time to find a job that is at least somewhat more related to what you want to do, or to find a school option you can commit to, or in some other way move towards the career you want without making any highly risky/expensive changes.
NASA is working on one, called the Space Launch System, but the agency is constrained by its budget
Maybe, if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration focused on the actual Aeronautics and Space, without venturing into things like Muslim outreach (to, and I quote: "help them feel good about their historic contribution to science") and research of industrial civilizations (collapse inevitable), they could scrape a few more bucks and deliver the rocket before Russia (or China) do...
You seriously think those things even begin to dent the budget of NASA? Your rant is more about criticizing the damn liberals and their GUBMINT than it is about any serious problem with NASA. If you really want to see NASA accomplish things, get congress the hell out of their business and stop letting every new administration pull new mandates out of their asses. Or, push more support for the COTS programs, that produce far better results at far less cost, thanks to free market economics which work so well everywhere else. The only problem is they don't funnel money into the pockets of established defense contractors...
Mod parent up, please. I had a whole pile of mod points sitting around, but this is the key reason that NASA flounders year after year - imagine if you were given 10-20 year projects to fulfill, and then had them changed completely every 8 years.
All of the civilizations you listed did fall off the list, what is so obvious (and which has seemingly evaded your scintillating scrutiny) is that the paper which is the subject of this thread (no long available per the link provided) is only a rehashing of the typical dogeared eco-leftist fear-mongering jingoistic pap that is ignored by the enlightened but embraced by the fearful.
Unfortunate that you didn't get the chance to read said paper for the many hours that it was available - they presented a predator/prey model of human population/environment, and anyone who has taken calculus and doesn't believe in preposterous things like infinity can recognize that it is a pretty fair (if dramatically simplified) starting point to put together a model and see what happens. The fact that humans are flexible about finding resources is balanced pretty well by the fact that they (in this initial model) consider ALL resources renewable, which anybody ought to admit is a pretty generous assumption.
Rather than all the rabid ad hominem, why not present a mathematical or at least fact-based rebuttal to their methodology? Is there a better starting point they should have used to generate a model that could explain the frequency of historical collapse? Any model is going to be flawed, but I for one think it is worth our time to try to learn from history and see how we might predict human cycles to inform modern policy - what is it about that approach, exactly, that you find so offensive?
I personally find the contention that our society is unique and invulnerable to collapse to be hopelessly naive from a historical, scientific, and economic perspective. And before you blame it on the hippies, look into the prepper movement - a whole lot of (mostly very conservative) folks that invest a ton of money and time in preparing for the scenario that you seem to see as a liberal conspiracy to promote communism.
We never get to the point where were run out of things that get scarce. Instead we find alternatives. The price of the alternatives might well be high, but they will be cheaper than the original resource. The higher prices in turn serve as a break on consumption. A free market ensures that the system is sustainable.
How, exactly, does the free market make sure things are done sustainably? How does it provide for resources that disappear faster than alternatives can be found, or when no alternatives are available? The free market doesn't give a shit if people starve to death because food has been priced out of the range of their income.
Just open your eyes and look at the magnificent world you live in, how damn easy life is for the modern day inhabitant of the civilized Roman/Minoan/Mycenaean/Mesopotamian/Sumerian/Akkadian/Assyerian/Babylonian/Achaemenid/Seleucid/Parthian/Sassanid/Umayyad/Abbasid/ Egyptian/ Hittite/ Harrapan/ Mauryan/ Gupta/ Zhou/ Han/ Tang/ Song/ Mayan/ Teotihuacan/ Monte Alban world. You have it good, really good. And you have current political philosophy to thank for everything you so high and mightily take for granted.
The upward assent of mankind is not at an end, irregardless of what some intelligent people spewed forth at a place of learning. They have an agenda, who the hell knows what it is other then it serves them in the short run. But you need to wake up and smell the roses, life is damn good and I (for one) really don't see any reason to suspect things aren't going to get even better.
FTFY. History suggests that collapse is the rule rather than exception among advanced civilizations. How would YOU explain that?
Until CERN can figure out a way to turn energy to matter, dirt is the only ubiquitous material that's available.
That's actually precisely what CERN (or the LHC, anyway) does at a very fundamental level. It imbues some particles with a shit-ton of energy and slams them into each other. Anything that fits within your energy budget might be found in the aftermath. That's the entire reason why you need bigger and bigger accelerators to continue the research - massive particles like the Higgs take a massive amount of energy to produce. And yes, in principle, a large enough accelerator could make you a big mac or suburban (although AFAIK, what comes out is basically random, so YMMV).
The problem is Einstein's formula (you know the one), because you actually have to get together the entire rest mass of the particle together... so e/(c^2) is what you need to produce a particle of m. That speed of light squared is a bitch of a denominator to contend with.
The primary energy for food is fossil fuel today. A calorie of food needs about 8 to 10 calories of fossil fuel to make and distribute in the developed nations.
So what you're saying is we should just drink gasoline and cut out the middle man?
Slashdot Mirror
Understood. Mistakes happen to the best of us.
The energy is not higher for the projectile, it is the same as for the rifle. How one can bring up the correct formulas and draw so stupid conclusions is beyond me.
The momentum is identical for projectile and rifle. The energy is not. Allow me to demonstrate.
.015kg*500m/s = 7.5 kg m/s = .5kg*15m/s. Got it? Now we know the velocity and mass of both objects in the system, we can easily calculate the energy.
Suppose a projectile of 15g, going at 500m/s, and a weapon of 500g. These are approximate figures to make life easy for us. Conservation of momentum means m1v1=m2v2, which means that the momentum of this projectile must equal the momentum of the pistol that launched it.
KE actually is 1/2mv^2 if we want to get some real values for this.
So, for the pistol -> 1/2*.5kg*(15m/s)^2 = 56.25 J
For the bullet -> 1/2*.015kg*(500m/s)^2 = 1875 J
I welcome you to draw whatever conclusions (stupid or otherwise) you would like, but it seems quite obvious that the energy in both cases is not, in fact, identical. Feel free to offer specific criticism about my calculations if you believe I have made an error. If you would like me to educate you further about basic physics, respond, and I would be delighted.
Yes, but the bruise is because the force is high since the projectile is slowed down very quickly. A thicker vest that allowed more penetration (without complete penetration, of course!) would be more forgiving for the wearer.
There is truth to both. KE = mv^2, whereas Momentum = mv. So, conservation of momentum and Newton's laws (equal and opposite force) means that the momentum of the rifle and momentum of the projectile are the same, but the energy of the bullet is much higher. Also, the longer distance you take to slow something down, the less force will be exerted. (F=ma, low acceleration means low force). So the rifle is heavy and long, which means the bullet gets far more energy and takes a proportionally long path to speed up, while on the other end the bullet is stopped in a very short distance and so still deposits a lot of energy very suddenly. If you could slow the bullet down gradually (a Michelin man sort of body armor, perhaps) the force could be greatly reduced.
Listen, I appreciate that you think the Democrats are the problem, and the Republicans are the solution, but the reality is that they are both the problem, because they are both primarily working for corporate donors. I like to see the Republicans in a tight spot, but not because I love the Democrats - more because it is always good to shake things up, and because Republicans of the past have been a pretty inspiring bunch, and that could give them incentive to return to their roots - sticking up for the common man, protecting freedom in real ways (civil rights, etc).
Feminists != democratic party. Plus, you had to reach back 2 administrations to find a (fairly weak) example. The other examples you gave also demonstrated my point: that republicans are divided on this issue - Chris Christie is supporting the regulation (which favors local dealerships who are almost certainly massive donors). Rubio and Perry are against it to try to gain favor of the republican anti-reg ideologues. Things like the repeal of Glass-Steagall were massively beneficial to Wall-street speculators who now had free reign to gamble with previously protected bank money. Getting rid of environmental regulation is a huge boon to many industries for whom it is very profitable to dump waste in rivers and strip huge swaths of the natural landscape with cheap but destructive mining practices.
When it comes to big influencers like the religious right, though, there is no hesitance to regulate marriage, or abortion, or drug use. This is starting to shift thanks to the increasing influence of libertarians, but that's what I'm saying: there are internal inconsistencies within the platform of the right, and Elon Musk's companies are highlighting them. It's going to be tough on the party to figure out how to find its identity coming through this (and the big demographic shifts happening), but it is also an opportunity to take a huge step in the right direction.
I was talking about Teddy.
I won't argue about your "Case 1", because, while I think it is flawed, it has a certain merit. However your "Case 2" is a pure strawman. The Republican stance has NEVER been that all regulation is bad. The Republican stance is that regulation is often bad and has often been introduced to "solve" problems created by previously existing regulations.
Tomato, tomahto. There are some tremendously beneficial things (like Glass-Steagall) that have been repealed in the voracious cries of the right for deregulation. The case of Tesla vs. Car Dealers absolutely reveals the truth behind the rhetoric: that Republicans want a regulatory environment that favors their buddies, regardless of whether that is more or less regulation.
Not saying that the democrats are different - just that they don't try as much to pitch themselves as ideological hardliners, and so the left isn't caught in these contortions as much.
Seriously - Tesla and SpaceX have both turned republican ideology on its head.
Case 1: republicans love the military-industrial complex and always protect their cost-plus pork for defense contractors, while simultaneously claiming to support fiscal responsibility and free-market competition. Once someone shows up actually wanting free market competition in these giant aerospace contracts, the republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Case 2: the republican stance is that all regulation is bad. So is environmentalism, and government loans. Rich people are awesome though, and deserve tax cuts and celebration for all the glorious good they do for the economy. Enter Tesla - a product targeted squarely at the upper end of middle class and higher, which is environmentally minded, got started with renewable energy loans, and which is stirring up areas where regulation legitimately is disrupting market efficiency.
The contortions the republican party has to go through to try to reconcile the inconsistencies highlighted by these companies are hilarious, and representative of the entire redefinition the party is going through. I'm hoping they'll get trounced by the dems another time or two and then emerge as something worthy of sharing a name with the party of Eisenhower, Roosevelt and Lincoln.
And --- even if it did, look at what people with too much time on hands do to this world: crime, gangs, terrorists, cults, drug users --- most of societies ills are AVOIDED by making these people have jobs so they don't have free time.
I don't think that anybody ever starts a life of crime, gang membership, terrorism, etc because they are just so freaking BORED. I think it is more like people who are economically desperate are willing to try morally suspect activities to escape their dire situations. After all, which demographic has "too much time on their hands", characteristically? Retirees. I don't see roaming gangs of geriatrics running around causing mayhem...
Citation needed. There's nothing to suggest that willful ignorance, superstition, and religion haven't been part of humanity all along, and they haven't managed to destroy us yet. Not saying that they can't, but that they haven't and there is no indication that our current stupidity epidemic is worse than it historically has been. Stupidity and superstition might even have been advantageous and contributed to our success as a species (indeed, the fact that those genes are still with us suggests that they conferred benefits in some situations.)
Khan academy is pretty incredible and the math lectures are really excellent (IMO). They've also got a built-in practice software that is decent.
This is spot on. I taught for a short while, and I would say that the most involved parents often had the most dependent students. Helping with homework kind of defeats the purpose unless it is done very carefully - the point is for students to learn to do work independently, and if parents are always providing help (and even motivation!) then students will flounder whenever that crutch is removed.
The bible as a work of literature has its exemplary moments, and I would encourage everyone to read it, from start to finish. But as a book on morality it is severely lacking in that you can never tell what to take literally, and what to not take literally. I guess use your own judgement? Well, you don't need the bible to do that.
It depends on what you mean by a "book of morality". The bible is primarily a narrative, containing stories of people failing, succeeding, and generally exploring every point on the spectrum between good and evil. Aesop's Fables, or other "moral" works also contain good and evil characters - not everything that happens is meant as an example of how to behave. There's a new branch of theology emerging around that fact - the bible is not, in fact, a book of moral instruction, but a book of stories, some of which are explicitly fictional. Why would a god choose to communicate to us through stories? It's an interesting question, IMO.
That said, the various genocides within the old testament are problematic. Nobody who is morally honest can say that a just god would ever command such a thing. Biblical scholars tend to treat it as some mixture of revisionism/unreliable narration - the Israelites commit genocide, and then use God to justify their actions.
It's a complicated text. Some people find a lot of beauty and value in it, and the new testament in particular contains some statements that are absolutely revolutionary and inspiring. These things are mostly ignored by the modern church.
I think the solution in this case is that hydrogen is cheap and plentiful - so you top off as necessary.
If you know you want to program, start laying out the groundwork for that to happen. See if there are things that can be automated/tackled with scripting in your current workplace. Find a way to start taking some community college (or the European equivalent?) programming classes to get a feel for things and see if you would really want to do it. Spend some of your free time doing tutorials, building your own programs for fun, or helping out on some open source effort.
Getting a degree is nice because it gets you past the HR gauntlet at many firms, and you have a lot more choice in jobs you can apply for. It corresponds pretty well to a pay increase - ROI is still pretty good on most tech degrees, and the earlier you get that degree out of the way the better. It isn't impossible to do what you want to do without a degree, but it certainly helps.
The big thing, though, is if you know what you want to do, start pursuing it. Take some step to make it happen. You have 6 months, which is plenty of time to find a job that is at least somewhat more related to what you want to do, or to find a school option you can commit to, or in some other way move towards the career you want without making any highly risky/expensive changes.
Doh. Messed up the link. Here's the fixed one: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
I wonder... maybe that's why you don't see a lot of ninja proctologists out there.
I wouldn't be so sure: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
Maybe, if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration focused on the actual Aeronautics and Space, without venturing into things like Muslim outreach (to, and I quote: "help them feel good about their historic contribution to science") and research of industrial civilizations (collapse inevitable), they could scrape a few more bucks and deliver the rocket before Russia (or China) do...
You seriously think those things even begin to dent the budget of NASA? Your rant is more about criticizing the damn liberals and their GUBMINT than it is about any serious problem with NASA. If you really want to see NASA accomplish things, get congress the hell out of their business and stop letting every new administration pull new mandates out of their asses. Or, push more support for the COTS programs, that produce far better results at far less cost, thanks to free market economics which work so well everywhere else. The only problem is they don't funnel money into the pockets of established defense contractors...
Mod parent up, please. I had a whole pile of mod points sitting around, but this is the key reason that NASA flounders year after year - imagine if you were given 10-20 year projects to fulfill, and then had them changed completely every 8 years.
All of the civilizations you listed did fall off the list, what is so obvious (and which has seemingly evaded your scintillating scrutiny) is that the paper which is the subject of this thread (no long available per the link provided) is only a rehashing of the typical dogeared eco-leftist fear-mongering jingoistic pap that is ignored by the enlightened but embraced by the fearful.
Unfortunate that you didn't get the chance to read said paper for the many hours that it was available - they presented a predator/prey model of human population/environment, and anyone who has taken calculus and doesn't believe in preposterous things like infinity can recognize that it is a pretty fair (if dramatically simplified) starting point to put together a model and see what happens. The fact that humans are flexible about finding resources is balanced pretty well by the fact that they (in this initial model) consider ALL resources renewable, which anybody ought to admit is a pretty generous assumption.
Rather than all the rabid ad hominem, why not present a mathematical or at least fact-based rebuttal to their methodology? Is there a better starting point they should have used to generate a model that could explain the frequency of historical collapse? Any model is going to be flawed, but I for one think it is worth our time to try to learn from history and see how we might predict human cycles to inform modern policy - what is it about that approach, exactly, that you find so offensive?
I personally find the contention that our society is unique and invulnerable to collapse to be hopelessly naive from a historical, scientific, and economic perspective. And before you blame it on the hippies, look into the prepper movement - a whole lot of (mostly very conservative) folks that invest a ton of money and time in preparing for the scenario that you seem to see as a liberal conspiracy to promote communism.
Be Well.
Likewise.
We never get to the point where were run out of things that get scarce. Instead we find alternatives. The price of the alternatives might well be high, but they will be cheaper than the original resource. The higher prices in turn serve as a break on consumption. A free market ensures that the system is sustainable.
How, exactly, does the free market make sure things are done sustainably? How does it provide for resources that disappear faster than alternatives can be found, or when no alternatives are available? The free market doesn't give a shit if people starve to death because food has been priced out of the range of their income.
Just open your eyes and look at the magnificent world you live in, how damn easy life is for the modern day inhabitant of the civilized Roman /Minoan /Mycenaean /Mesopotamian /Sumerian /Akkadian /Assyerian /Babylonian /Achaemenid /Seleucid /Parthian /Sassanid /Umayyad /Abbasid/ Egyptian/ Hittite/ Harrapan/ Mauryan/ Gupta/ Zhou/ Han/ Tang/ Song/ Mayan/ Teotihuacan/ Monte Alban world. You have it good, really good. And you have current political philosophy to thank for everything you so high and mightily take for granted.
The upward assent of mankind is not at an end, irregardless of what some intelligent people spewed forth at a place of learning. They have an agenda, who the hell knows what it is other then it serves them in the short run. But you need to wake up and smell the roses, life is damn good and I (for one) really don't see any reason to suspect things aren't going to get even better.
FTFY. History suggests that collapse is the rule rather than exception among advanced civilizations. How would YOU explain that?
Until CERN can figure out a way to turn energy to matter, dirt is the only ubiquitous material that's available.
That's actually precisely what CERN (or the LHC, anyway) does at a very fundamental level. It imbues some particles with a shit-ton of energy and slams them into each other. Anything that fits within your energy budget might be found in the aftermath. That's the entire reason why you need bigger and bigger accelerators to continue the research - massive particles like the Higgs take a massive amount of energy to produce. And yes, in principle, a large enough accelerator could make you a big mac or suburban (although AFAIK, what comes out is basically random, so YMMV).
The problem is Einstein's formula (you know the one), because you actually have to get together the entire rest mass of the particle together... so e/(c^2) is what you need to produce a particle of m. That speed of light squared is a bitch of a denominator to contend with.
The primary energy for food is fossil fuel today. A calorie of food needs about 8 to 10 calories of fossil fuel to make and distribute in the developed nations.
So what you're saying is we should just drink gasoline and cut out the middle man?