Americans will be at a loss to find new words to describe the new failed states north of the border of the current USA-Mexico. I suggest New Michoacán, New Tamaulipas, New Chihuahua or New Ciudad Juárez.
Wouldn't those names be "Nuevo [statename]"? But personally, I'd prefer if places gave up on the tired and uninspired tradition of naming themselves "New such-and-such", and just came up with unique names altogether.
Regardless, what happens in those states is their own business. If they can't manage themselves properly and get taken over by Mexico, that's their problem.
I would have picked 4-6 countries myself; I do feel like breaking 310M people into 9 countries leaves the resulting populations a little on the small side (only 34.5M average) compared to other industrialized nations like Germany, Britain, France, and Italy, and leaving them with much less economic power than if they were to split into a smaller number of nations. Splitting the country into 4, for instance, would leave each with an average population of 78M, which is about the same as the UK's population IIRC, and the UK apparently is large enough and strong enough that they don't feel the need to join the Euro currency. Also, having 9 different currencies would be a bit of a PITA, whereas only 4 wouldn't be quite so bad.
So, instead of your proposed regions, I would propose southeast (including east Texas, east OK, AR, maybe TN, maybe MO, maybe KY minus Louisville), northeast (including east PA, MD, DC, and NoVA), southwest (including west TX, west OK (just that tiny sliver), CO, NM, AZ, NV, maybe SoCal), northwest (including OR, WA, NorCal, maybe parts of ID and WY and MT), and northern plains and rustbelt (NB, KS, maybe MO, SD, ND, MN, WI, IL, IN, OH, MI).
Also, we both haven't addressed Hawai'i or Alaska. Maybe they could go with the northwest country. It seems to me that NorCal should go with them anyway, as the resulting country would be the world tech capital, with SanFran/SiValley/Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle all in the same nation. Maybe they could even convince BC/Vancouver to break away from Canada and join them, which would make it even easier for Alaska to join them as they'd be contiguous, and Vancouver is another pretty strong tech city and somewhat similar to the other two northwest cities in climate and culture. And this leads us to Canada: maybe that country could break apart as well when this is all going on; it's not like that place is all that well unified anyway (the Quebecoi have never gotten along with the rest that well). The Maritime provinces might prefer to break away and join the New England states in a single country, or Alberta and SK might prefer to join whatever country Montana is a part of, while Ontaria might prefer to join up with the rust-belt states.
Let the military stay where they are and let the new states form alliances of mutual protection.
There's no reason all or most of the resulting countries can't form a new defense union much like NATO. Unfortunately they can't call it "North American Treaty Organization" since "NATO" is already taken, so they'll need a new name, but it can work the same.
I'm pretty sure that all of these regions would be much much more homogeneous and happier not having to try to get along with the rest of the other crazies in this country.
On this I agree completely. However, if you look at it from the point of view of the "crazies", they think the other people (that's you) are the "crazies", but still, this just shows that everyone will be happier being in smaller, more homogeneous countries. However, we should draw up some kind of plans for immigration to allow people to move to the country they prefer, at least for a while during the transition period, in case they decide that their state/region is too full of "crazies" and they want to go somewhere where the grass is greener. After a while, though, this needs to be shut down, so if the economy in one region starts going south badly because of their bad leadership and policies, they can't just all migrate to the better-run parts, and they're forced to deal with their problems head-on.
Then you're going to have to provide some evidence to the contrary. According to the Wikipedia article another poster posted, the only violence was in Romania and Yugaslavia. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus broke apart peacefully, and the vast majority of people in the Soviet Union (or Warsaw Pact states, which weren't technically part of the Union) saw a very peaceful transition.
You're going to have to elaborate, because according to your link (which agrees with my memory, but I went ahead and read the first page (the summary) to make sure I wasn't missing something big), the dissolution of the Soviet Union was mostly very peaceful. There was an attempted coup, but that was foiled with Yeltsin's help, after that a bunch of republics decided they wanted out and declared independence, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus met secretly and signed the Belavezha Accords agreeing to break up the union, and it went from there. It looks like the only problems with violence were mainly the Romanian Revolution, and the mess in Yugoslavia, both of which didn't affect the vast majority of (former Soviet/Warsaw Pact) citizens at all. More important is: how are all these nations doing today, versus how would they be if the Soviet Union had tried to hang on? I imagine most citizens in these countries are happier with the way things now. The Pols, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, East Germans, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and various other eastern European peoples seem to be doing much better economically these days than under Soviet rule, and I don't hear much about any of those people whining how much they wish the Soviet Union was still in control.
That I don't know. However, the treasury bonds can't just be cashed in any time by the bearer; other nations can't just "call in [their] debt", they can only be paid when they come due.
Presumably, however, if the country broke apart, the debt would fall to the new, smaller countries, probably according to some kind of agreement brokered by the different sides. I imagine it could be made proportional to the relative GDPs of each new nation. Surely we can just look at history to see how this works: we saw several nations break apart only 20 years ago. How'd they handle dividing their debt?
As far as "holding the bag", since those states were part of the union when the debt was amassed, it wouldn't be fair for them to run off scot-free; they have to shoulder their portion of it. Again, I'm sure the same happened when Czechoslovakia broke apart, or when the Soviet Union broke apart. That's how peaceful break-ups go: everyone involved has to sit down and agree on how to divide things. If the Russians can do that peacefully, surely we can too. And if we can't, then we can expect our (in both/all resulting new smaller countries) new credit rating to be terrible, so they would surely want to avoid that.
1: If people think the US is in trouble now, wait until the economic repercussions of losing states. This hasn't happened since Yugoslavia, and it would utterly destroy the state fragments, economically.
It's worked out well for the Soviet Union and for Czechoslovakia. Lots of other small countries get along just fine without having to be part of some giant federal republic.
2: There would be no economic prosperity again. Border skirmishes would happen, and inland states would want their access to the ocean, so you would have a constant state of turmoil. Europe had exactly this after Rome's fall, and it took a good part of a millennium to get civilization back.
The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia had almost none of this (except for South Ossetia). Also, who's talking about states being separate? They'd surely form into larger unions. Did you forget the Civil War in 1861? The southern states didn't all go their separate ways, they combined into a new, single union of their own. The only way some states wouldn't have access to the ocean is if a bunch of midwest states seceded and couldn't get any coastal states to join them. That seems unlikely. The most likely candidates for immediate secession are the southern states, and they all have coastal access (TX, LA, MS, AL, FL, GA, SC, NC, VA). States like AR, OK, MO, TN would surely join one or more of their neighboring states with coastal access.
3: The areas of the world dangerous to the US can become dangerous to other countries. Al Qaeda still wants its caliphate, and will be more than happy to pay European countries visits bearing "gifts" to knuckle them under once the US is gone. Their victory against Spain in 2003 will always be remembered.
Oh please, you sound just like all the other dumb imperialist war hawks. If "the terrorists" wanted to really hurt the US, they'd go shoot up a mall like what happened in Kenya. They haven't, and it's not because it's hard to pull off, it's because "the terrorists" are a boogeyman.
5: With the US gone, where would a "brain trust" go? Sucky as it is, the US is where the scientists go to make discoveries because it is a relatively free country
Now you're sounding either really loony or really stupid. You think the whole country is going to magically disappear? The scientists are going to stay where they are, in the parts of the US that are good for doing science, and just be part of new, smaller countries. Those that aren't are probably going to move to the west coast, which would be its own separate country and would dominate the world economically thanks to it being the tech capital of the world.
6: People don't realize what true imperalism is. The US might be the world's buffoon right now, but they haven't claimed Iraq is a 51'st state or a colony. There are other countries who will be happy to overrun an oil-rich nation if given the chance and turn it into a colony.
So what? That's not our concern. Let someone else be the world's policeman.
7: With the US gone, who is to stop nuclear armament with other countries?
You mean like how suddenly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, everyone made their own nukes and then started WWIII, destroying the planet? Oh right, that didn't happen.
Yes, but even if tons of Americans suddenly jumped on the crypto bandwagon and ditched Facebook or whatever, it's not going to cause any kind of change in the US government or its policies. The voters are still going to vote the same way. The only difference will be that the NSA will have a harder time spying on everyone.
That's an interesting scenario, but I still see a couple of problems:
1) Ok, the government could go hire a bunch of mercenaries from the middle east and use chemical WMDs from drones (which would then need to be operated by mercenaries as well; currently they're operated by Americans stationed in Nevada IIRC). However, you seem to be forgetting the huge military that America already has. You don't think that it's going to rise up and attack the government (and its mercenaries) after being sidelined like this and asked to sit back while WMDs are used against its own countrymen? There's national guardspeople everywhere, along with NG armories. Your average redneck with an AR-15 or AK-47 isn't much threat to one of Obama's drones, but anti-aircraft guns from your local National Guard armory certainly are. And who knows what other weapons they have stashed, perhaps Stinger missiles? Maybe some NG people might have some better perspective here.
2) The Iraqis never surrendered, not really. They're still fighting; there's still a lot of violence in Iraq because the different groups are not happy with things. Now, they call them "insurgents". The same thing would surely happen here; the malcontents would lay low for a while, and then conduct various guerilla warfare operations (called "terrorist acts" by the government of course) against any authorities: police, troops, politicians, etc.
The idea of the US military shooting at fellow Americans seems pretty silly. Moreover, most people in the military probably come from the "red states" themselves, so they'd not only be fighting their own countrymen, but people from their own regions and hometowns. It's not like all the jarheads in the Army grew up in NYC and San Francisco.
What's wrong with having a Soviet-style collapse? The Soviet Union broke apart quickly and peacefully; not a single shot was fired IIRC (unless you count the later flare-up in South Ossetia). Maybe that's just what we need; then the states that elect Tea Partiers can be spun off into their own, separate countries, so they can't affect our political process.
Maybe, but as long as the US stays a single nation, the US voters are going to continue to elect "teabagger" congresspeople, meaning this problem won't go away.
Yes, but the idea of the US invading Russia is absolutely insane, and so is the idea of the US invading China. If those two countries replace the US dollar, there's nothing the US can do about it short of nuclear war. Of course, with the insane leaders we have here in the US, maybe that's why they're moving slowly.
Whoever created it obviously hasn't looked at a map lately. Even if you assume that they really meant MS (Mississippi) instead of Michigan (MI), Missouri is only barely contiguous with the other states there, separated by Arkansas, and joined to Oklahoma by a tiny stretch of border. Is there some reason they don't want Arkansas in their new country? Is it just because Clinton came from there? Anyone from the area care to comment?
Also, why'd they leave out Alabama of all states? I would have thought MS and AL would go hand-in-hand. And the northwest portion of FL (the part bordering southern AL) would probably want to go with them.
Anyway, it sounds like a great idea to me. Imagine how well the rest of us will do without those states (and most importantly, their voters) holding us back. Maybe we could even dump ObamaCare and replace it with true universal healthcare like the Europeans have.
In their mind, it's surely a question of "how far is too far?", and the government simply hasn't gone so far yet to warrant using any kind of violence against it (since that is obviously a giant step filled with enormous personal risk). They just want to keep the option available just in case. At least I imagine this is the thinking of most people who subscribe to that argument.
Better crypto tech is all fine and well, but that's not going to bring any kind of change to the US government; it's still in the hands of the voters, who aren't going to use that crypto tech because "they have nothing to hide" and because they're generally Fox News or MSNBC-watching idiots.
I can see other nations, including China, acting together, bringing much more change to the global state of politics, and consequently to the US. They have the power to do so (especially if they act together), and if the world's reserve currency switches from the USD to something else, that's going to cause massive changes for everyday Americans.
You don't even need to speculate, you just need to go select "Apollo 13" on Netflix and watch it. There might be some factual errors, but they're minor nitpicky problems (like something wrong with a logo somewhere, and something wrong with someone's breath), not anything that affect the plot. Apollo 13 was a real story, and made for a great movie, and it didn't have to completely mangle the science to do it.
I think the idea of warp was that they didn't want the warp engines on all the time (plus, they frequently said the transporters don't work at warp speeds). Their energy available isn't limitless; remember the Captain has to sign a fuel-consumption report every shift.
Even so, how many astronauts would you need to enter an actual 2001-era CPU cabinet to shut down a rogue AI program? While he nailed the vision of centripetal gravity, he completely missed on some of the most important technical advances.
This is normal with real sci-fi. Sci-fi is about speculating what the future will be like, not inventing stories set in the present day. Sometimes sci-fi writers do a good job predicting things, other times they don't. Writers in the 60s and 70s almost universally did a pretty bad job predicting the extreme miniaturization that would happen with computer technology, so it's no surprise 2001 and Alien showed computers that took up whole rooms; that's what computers looked like back then, and everyone thought they'd be like that in the future too: huge, just more powerful than ones of their own time.
However, Gravity is not sci-fi. As I said before, sci-fi is about predicting the future; it's frequently called "speculative fiction" for this reason. Gravity isn't set in the future; it's set in the present. Just because it's about people in space doesn't make it sci-fi or futuristic; Apollo 13 (the movie) wasn't sci-fi either, it was a movie about real events that happened in the past. Gravity isn't any more sci-fi than Top Gun was: it's set in the present day (for the time each respective movie was made), uses current technology, is set in our own world/universe, and just makes up a story about fictional characters set in that setting. How would people have reacted if Top Gun showed the planes firing laser beams, or flying to their mission in the Indian Ocean in 20 minutes? If you're going to make a movie that's just fiction set in the real world in the present day, then it needs to be realistic or else there isn't much point in watching it. If you don't want to be constrained by the limits of reality, then make a fantasy movie.
What makes the same people eat up LOTR or the Hobbit with total suspension of disbelief, but grouse incessantly about flowing hair?
Because LOTR and other fantasy films are just that: fantasy. They exist in their own universe, and as long as they hold to the laws of that universe (which may include the use of magic, as long as it's not all-powerful, for instance), then it's fine. It's also fun because it's escapist entertainment. Movies like this do not ever pretend to be realistic in any way; it's plainly obvious that they're fantastical, so as long as they aren't totally ridiculous, they're believable and acceptable.
However, if a film is set in the present-day, in our own universe, then I expect it to follow the laws of this universe. If a movie can't be bothered to do that, and pretends to be realistic when in fact it's just as fantastical as LOTR, then I'd rather spend my time watching a fantasy movie that's completely honest about that fact. Movies about real-life (or the real universe we inhabit) are more difficult, in a way, than fantasy movies, because they do need to remain realistic. They don't get to wow audiences with magic spells, fairy-tale creatures, elaborate dungeons, fantastical landscapes, etc., so they have to rely on having a good story and good characters to keep audiences interested. Unfortunately, crap movies like Gravity try to have it both ways: they try to pretend they're realistic, but then they take fantastical short-cuts to make the severely flawed plot work.
Speaking of. Who the fuck is "The Kernel", anyway?
That's what I'd like to know. I did a quick google search and there's no Wikipedia article about them, so they're obviously not notable. I'm not going to click on the article or the site because I don't want to generate any pageviews or click income for some shitty right-wing rag site.
I think a better solution is to put them in a room, no phones, no internet, no TV cameras and tell them they get out after a solution is agreed on.
Even better would be to make sure there's no food or water in the room either, and no bathrooms to boot. Finally, the room should be sealed airtight, with no ventilation system at all.
This is supposed to be a meeting for scientists; there's very few women there to begin with, and the men aren't supposed to have any kind of sexual relationships with the women, as that detracts from their work and decreases profitability for the corporation.
This is exactly correct. And as for that "asking about the kids" thing, scientists and engineers aren't supposed to be having kids in the first place (or getting married for that matter). They're supposed to dedicate their lives and all their waking hours to their jobs. Only managers and other people-people are supposed to have kids and family lives.
Did you mean by "corporate market" monstrous devices that barely work, are slow, give all control of the device to faceless corporate drones, and can only read microsoft office documents?
Slashdot Mirror
Americans will be at a loss to find new words to describe the new failed states north of the border of the current USA-Mexico. I suggest New Michoacán, New Tamaulipas, New Chihuahua or New Ciudad Juárez.
Wouldn't those names be "Nuevo [statename]"? But personally, I'd prefer if places gave up on the tired and uninspired tradition of naming themselves "New such-and-such", and just came up with unique names altogether.
Regardless, what happens in those states is their own business. If they can't manage themselves properly and get taken over by Mexico, that's their problem.
I would have picked 4-6 countries myself; I do feel like breaking 310M people into 9 countries leaves the resulting populations a little on the small side (only 34.5M average) compared to other industrialized nations like Germany, Britain, France, and Italy, and leaving them with much less economic power than if they were to split into a smaller number of nations. Splitting the country into 4, for instance, would leave each with an average population of 78M, which is about the same as the UK's population IIRC, and the UK apparently is large enough and strong enough that they don't feel the need to join the Euro currency. Also, having 9 different currencies would be a bit of a PITA, whereas only 4 wouldn't be quite so bad.
So, instead of your proposed regions, I would propose southeast (including east Texas, east OK, AR, maybe TN, maybe MO, maybe KY minus Louisville), northeast (including east PA, MD, DC, and NoVA), southwest (including west TX, west OK (just that tiny sliver), CO, NM, AZ, NV, maybe SoCal), northwest (including OR, WA, NorCal, maybe parts of ID and WY and MT), and northern plains and rustbelt (NB, KS, maybe MO, SD, ND, MN, WI, IL, IN, OH, MI).
Also, we both haven't addressed Hawai'i or Alaska. Maybe they could go with the northwest country. It seems to me that NorCal should go with them anyway, as the resulting country would be the world tech capital, with SanFran/SiValley/Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle all in the same nation. Maybe they could even convince BC/Vancouver to break away from Canada and join them, which would make it even easier for Alaska to join them as they'd be contiguous, and Vancouver is another pretty strong tech city and somewhat similar to the other two northwest cities in climate and culture. And this leads us to Canada: maybe that country could break apart as well when this is all going on; it's not like that place is all that well unified anyway (the Quebecoi have never gotten along with the rest that well). The Maritime provinces might prefer to break away and join the New England states in a single country, or Alberta and SK might prefer to join whatever country Montana is a part of, while Ontaria might prefer to join up with the rust-belt states.
Let the military stay where they are and let the new states form alliances of mutual protection.
There's no reason all or most of the resulting countries can't form a new defense union much like NATO. Unfortunately they can't call it "North American Treaty Organization" since "NATO" is already taken, so they'll need a new name, but it can work the same.
I'm pretty sure that all of these regions would be much much more homogeneous and happier not having to try to get along with the rest of the other crazies in this country.
On this I agree completely. However, if you look at it from the point of view of the "crazies", they think the other people (that's you) are the "crazies", but still, this just shows that everyone will be happier being in smaller, more homogeneous countries. However, we should draw up some kind of plans for immigration to allow people to move to the country they prefer, at least for a while during the transition period, in case they decide that their state/region is too full of "crazies" and they want to go somewhere where the grass is greener. After a while, though, this needs to be shut down, so if the economy in one region starts going south badly because of their bad leadership and policies, they can't just all migrate to the better-run parts, and they're forced to deal with their problems head-on.
Then you're going to have to provide some evidence to the contrary. According to the Wikipedia article another poster posted, the only violence was in Romania and Yugaslavia. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus broke apart peacefully, and the vast majority of people in the Soviet Union (or Warsaw Pact states, which weren't technically part of the Union) saw a very peaceful transition.
You're going to have to elaborate, because according to your link (which agrees with my memory, but I went ahead and read the first page (the summary) to make sure I wasn't missing something big), the dissolution of the Soviet Union was mostly very peaceful. There was an attempted coup, but that was foiled with Yeltsin's help, after that a bunch of republics decided they wanted out and declared independence, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus met secretly and signed the Belavezha Accords agreeing to break up the union, and it went from there. It looks like the only problems with violence were mainly the Romanian Revolution, and the mess in Yugoslavia, both of which didn't affect the vast majority of (former Soviet/Warsaw Pact) citizens at all. More important is: how are all these nations doing today, versus how would they be if the Soviet Union had tried to hang on? I imagine most citizens in these countries are happier with the way things now. The Pols, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, East Germans, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and various other eastern European peoples seem to be doing much better economically these days than under Soviet rule, and I don't hear much about any of those people whining how much they wish the Soviet Union was still in control.
That I don't know. However, the treasury bonds can't just be cashed in any time by the bearer; other nations can't just "call in [their] debt", they can only be paid when they come due.
Presumably, however, if the country broke apart, the debt would fall to the new, smaller countries, probably according to some kind of agreement brokered by the different sides. I imagine it could be made proportional to the relative GDPs of each new nation. Surely we can just look at history to see how this works: we saw several nations break apart only 20 years ago. How'd they handle dividing their debt?
As far as "holding the bag", since those states were part of the union when the debt was amassed, it wouldn't be fair for them to run off scot-free; they have to shoulder their portion of it. Again, I'm sure the same happened when Czechoslovakia broke apart, or when the Soviet Union broke apart. That's how peaceful break-ups go: everyone involved has to sit down and agree on how to divide things. If the Russians can do that peacefully, surely we can too. And if we can't, then we can expect our (in both/all resulting new smaller countries) new credit rating to be terrible, so they would surely want to avoid that.
1: If people think the US is in trouble now, wait until the economic repercussions of losing states. This hasn't happened since Yugoslavia, and it would utterly destroy the state fragments, economically.
It's worked out well for the Soviet Union and for Czechoslovakia. Lots of other small countries get along just fine without having to be part of some giant federal republic.
2: There would be no economic prosperity again. Border skirmishes would happen, and inland states would want their access to the ocean, so you would have a constant state of turmoil. Europe had exactly this after Rome's fall, and it took a good part of a millennium to get civilization back.
The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia had almost none of this (except for South Ossetia). Also, who's talking about states being separate? They'd surely form into larger unions. Did you forget the Civil War in 1861? The southern states didn't all go their separate ways, they combined into a new, single union of their own. The only way some states wouldn't have access to the ocean is if a bunch of midwest states seceded and couldn't get any coastal states to join them. That seems unlikely. The most likely candidates for immediate secession are the southern states, and they all have coastal access (TX, LA, MS, AL, FL, GA, SC, NC, VA). States like AR, OK, MO, TN would surely join one or more of their neighboring states with coastal access.
3: The areas of the world dangerous to the US can become dangerous to other countries. Al Qaeda still wants its caliphate, and will be more than happy to pay European countries visits bearing "gifts" to knuckle them under once the US is gone. Their victory against Spain in 2003 will always be remembered.
Oh please, you sound just like all the other dumb imperialist war hawks. If "the terrorists" wanted to really hurt the US, they'd go shoot up a mall like what happened in Kenya. They haven't, and it's not because it's hard to pull off, it's because "the terrorists" are a boogeyman.
5: With the US gone, where would a "brain trust" go? Sucky as it is, the US is where the scientists go to make discoveries because it is a relatively free country
Now you're sounding either really loony or really stupid. You think the whole country is going to magically disappear? The scientists are going to stay where they are, in the parts of the US that are good for doing science, and just be part of new, smaller countries. Those that aren't are probably going to move to the west coast, which would be its own separate country and would dominate the world economically thanks to it being the tech capital of the world.
6: People don't realize what true imperalism is. The US might be the world's buffoon right now, but they haven't claimed Iraq is a 51'st state or a colony. There are other countries who will be happy to overrun an oil-rich nation if given the chance and turn it into a colony.
So what? That's not our concern. Let someone else be the world's policeman.
7: With the US gone, who is to stop nuclear armament with other countries?
You mean like how suddenly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, everyone made their own nukes and then started WWIII, destroying the planet? Oh right, that didn't happen.
Yes, but even if tons of Americans suddenly jumped on the crypto bandwagon and ditched Facebook or whatever, it's not going to cause any kind of change in the US government or its policies. The voters are still going to vote the same way. The only difference will be that the NSA will have a harder time spying on everyone.
That's an interesting scenario, but I still see a couple of problems:
1) Ok, the government could go hire a bunch of mercenaries from the middle east and use chemical WMDs from drones (which would then need to be operated by mercenaries as well; currently they're operated by Americans stationed in Nevada IIRC). However, you seem to be forgetting the huge military that America already has. You don't think that it's going to rise up and attack the government (and its mercenaries) after being sidelined like this and asked to sit back while WMDs are used against its own countrymen? There's national guardspeople everywhere, along with NG armories. Your average redneck with an AR-15 or AK-47 isn't much threat to one of Obama's drones, but anti-aircraft guns from your local National Guard armory certainly are. And who knows what other weapons they have stashed, perhaps Stinger missiles? Maybe some NG people might have some better perspective here.
2) The Iraqis never surrendered, not really. They're still fighting; there's still a lot of violence in Iraq because the different groups are not happy with things. Now, they call them "insurgents". The same thing would surely happen here; the malcontents would lay low for a while, and then conduct various guerilla warfare operations (called "terrorist acts" by the government of course) against any authorities: police, troops, politicians, etc.
The idea of the US military shooting at fellow Americans seems pretty silly. Moreover, most people in the military probably come from the "red states" themselves, so they'd not only be fighting their own countrymen, but people from their own regions and hometowns. It's not like all the jarheads in the Army grew up in NYC and San Francisco.
What's wrong with having a Soviet-style collapse? The Soviet Union broke apart quickly and peacefully; not a single shot was fired IIRC (unless you count the later flare-up in South Ossetia). Maybe that's just what we need; then the states that elect Tea Partiers can be spun off into their own, separate countries, so they can't affect our political process.
Maybe, but as long as the US stays a single nation, the US voters are going to continue to elect "teabagger" congresspeople, meaning this problem won't go away.
Yes, but the idea of the US invading Russia is absolutely insane, and so is the idea of the US invading China. If those two countries replace the US dollar, there's nothing the US can do about it short of nuclear war. Of course, with the insane leaders we have here in the US, maybe that's why they're moving slowly.
Here's an article with a picture of that billboard:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/09/2760221/mysterious-pro-secession-billboard-appears-in-missouri/
Whoever created it obviously hasn't looked at a map lately. Even if you assume that they really meant MS (Mississippi) instead of Michigan (MI), Missouri is only barely contiguous with the other states there, separated by Arkansas, and joined to Oklahoma by a tiny stretch of border. Is there some reason they don't want Arkansas in their new country? Is it just because Clinton came from there? Anyone from the area care to comment?
Also, why'd they leave out Alabama of all states? I would have thought MS and AL would go hand-in-hand. And the northwest portion of FL (the part bordering southern AL) would probably want to go with them.
Anyway, it sounds like a great idea to me. Imagine how well the rest of us will do without those states (and most importantly, their voters) holding us back. Maybe we could even dump ObamaCare and replace it with true universal healthcare like the Europeans have.
In their mind, it's surely a question of "how far is too far?", and the government simply hasn't gone so far yet to warrant using any kind of violence against it (since that is obviously a giant step filled with enormous personal risk). They just want to keep the option available just in case. At least I imagine this is the thinking of most people who subscribe to that argument.
Better crypto tech is all fine and well, but that's not going to bring any kind of change to the US government; it's still in the hands of the voters, who aren't going to use that crypto tech because "they have nothing to hide" and because they're generally Fox News or MSNBC-watching idiots.
I can see other nations, including China, acting together, bringing much more change to the global state of politics, and consequently to the US. They have the power to do so (especially if they act together), and if the world's reserve currency switches from the USD to something else, that's going to cause massive changes for everyday Americans.
You don't even need to speculate, you just need to go select "Apollo 13" on Netflix and watch it. There might be some factual errors, but they're minor nitpicky problems (like something wrong with a logo somewhere, and something wrong with someone's breath), not anything that affect the plot. Apollo 13 was a real story, and made for a great movie, and it didn't have to completely mangle the science to do it.
I think the idea of warp was that they didn't want the warp engines on all the time (plus, they frequently said the transporters don't work at warp speeds). Their energy available isn't limitless; remember the Captain has to sign a fuel-consumption report every shift.
Even so, how many astronauts would you need to enter an actual 2001-era CPU cabinet to shut down a rogue AI program? While he nailed the vision of centripetal gravity, he completely missed on some of the most important technical advances.
This is normal with real sci-fi. Sci-fi is about speculating what the future will be like, not inventing stories set in the present day. Sometimes sci-fi writers do a good job predicting things, other times they don't. Writers in the 60s and 70s almost universally did a pretty bad job predicting the extreme miniaturization that would happen with computer technology, so it's no surprise 2001 and Alien showed computers that took up whole rooms; that's what computers looked like back then, and everyone thought they'd be like that in the future too: huge, just more powerful than ones of their own time.
However, Gravity is not sci-fi. As I said before, sci-fi is about predicting the future; it's frequently called "speculative fiction" for this reason. Gravity isn't set in the future; it's set in the present. Just because it's about people in space doesn't make it sci-fi or futuristic; Apollo 13 (the movie) wasn't sci-fi either, it was a movie about real events that happened in the past. Gravity isn't any more sci-fi than Top Gun was: it's set in the present day (for the time each respective movie was made), uses current technology, is set in our own world/universe, and just makes up a story about fictional characters set in that setting. How would people have reacted if Top Gun showed the planes firing laser beams, or flying to their mission in the Indian Ocean in 20 minutes? If you're going to make a movie that's just fiction set in the real world in the present day, then it needs to be realistic or else there isn't much point in watching it. If you don't want to be constrained by the limits of reality, then make a fantasy movie.
What makes the same people eat up LOTR or the Hobbit with total suspension of disbelief, but grouse incessantly about flowing hair?
Because LOTR and other fantasy films are just that: fantasy. They exist in their own universe, and as long as they hold to the laws of that universe (which may include the use of magic, as long as it's not all-powerful, for instance), then it's fine. It's also fun because it's escapist entertainment. Movies like this do not ever pretend to be realistic in any way; it's plainly obvious that they're fantastical, so as long as they aren't totally ridiculous, they're believable and acceptable.
However, if a film is set in the present-day, in our own universe, then I expect it to follow the laws of this universe. If a movie can't be bothered to do that, and pretends to be realistic when in fact it's just as fantastical as LOTR, then I'd rather spend my time watching a fantasy movie that's completely honest about that fact. Movies about real-life (or the real universe we inhabit) are more difficult, in a way, than fantasy movies, because they do need to remain realistic. They don't get to wow audiences with magic spells, fairy-tale creatures, elaborate dungeons, fantastical landscapes, etc., so they have to rely on having a good story and good characters to keep audiences interested. Unfortunately, crap movies like Gravity try to have it both ways: they try to pretend they're realistic, but then they take fantastical short-cuts to make the severely flawed plot work.
Speaking of. Who the fuck is "The Kernel", anyway?
That's what I'd like to know. I did a quick google search and there's no Wikipedia article about them, so they're obviously not notable. I'm not going to click on the article or the site because I don't want to generate any pageviews or click income for some shitty right-wing rag site.
I think a better solution is to put them in a room, no phones, no internet, no TV cameras and tell them they get out after a solution is agreed on.
Even better would be to make sure there's no food or water in the room either, and no bathrooms to boot. Finally, the room should be sealed airtight, with no ventilation system at all.
This is supposed to be a meeting for scientists; there's very few women there to begin with, and the men aren't supposed to have any kind of sexual relationships with the women, as that detracts from their work and decreases profitability for the corporation.
This is exactly correct. And as for that "asking about the kids" thing, scientists and engineers aren't supposed to be having kids in the first place (or getting married for that matter). They're supposed to dedicate their lives and all their waking hours to their jobs. Only managers and other people-people are supposed to have kids and family lives.
You don't use the engine to drive the wheels, you use it solely to generate electicity and charge the batteries.
It might make more sense to use a gasoline-powered fuel cell than an engine.
Did you mean by "corporate market" monstrous devices that barely work, are slow, give all control of the device to faceless corporate drones, and can only read microsoft office documents?
Yes, corporations like all those features.