Why? It is Darwin time. Let the fittest survive and the first to die to get a unit in her name, according to the old custom.
Here is a map of intelligent civilizations who have successfully reproduced (by experiment in the laboratory) the conditions for creating Gamma Ray Bursts. No one knows whether this map is up to date or even functional because it requires the installation of Microsoft Silverlight, which is only used by Netflix users who would rather watch movies than ping the dying remnants of failed civilizations. Our knowledge of Gamma Ray Bursts is incomplete because astrophysicists have devoted far more time to avoiding Silverlight, which they consider to be a greater danger to life here on Earth.
The light curves of GRB events ech contain a complex pulse-coded message placed there by the Grand Architect that says in effect, "Whatever you do... don't do this." While the signals have not been decoded, their diversity suggests that there are a number of things that one just should not do. Except for plot on the bottom right which cannot be right, I did that in High School.
Because the characteristics of celestial GRBs mimic the explosion of fission bombs, these bursts are Nature's Way to push paranoid little civilizations over the edge to go full-out on one another during nuclear adolescence. There is a reality show out there that showcases one of these every week with a laugh track dropped in at every retaliatory response, rousing applause at the end.
That is because when you plea to the modern world at large to consume less energy, you are asking people to die.[corrected link]
Oops, I intended to link to the entire Connections episode S01E01 "The Trigger Effect" [1978]. It is one of the finest hours ever produced for television, and it accurately portrays the entire world's dependence on modern technology.
Modern thinkers often feel empowered to detach massive surplus energy from the 'things' it has made possible. For example --- imagining an African clinic with a tiny but comfortable bit of energy available --- and (somehow) stocked with antibiotics and modern machines. It is a grossly distorted, even malevolent vision.
There is no rolling back from the goal of delivering a level of world energy per capita equal to its most voracious users. It will not work now that the world has glimpsed its effect, and some are in possession of it. Not even a little bit.
[Stover] Economists and energy experts shy away from issues of equity and morality, but climate change and environmental justice are inseparable: It's impossible to talk intelligently about climate without discussing how to distribute limited energy resources.
Just what I needed today, someone who uses 'friendly UN language' in an earnest attempt to empower me to speak intelligently about climate. To do so I need to add the term environmental justice to my vocabulary. There is another pill to swallow too, the implied mandate that someone must decide how to distribute limited energy resources.
I piss in the general direction of anyone who would impose such a nebulous definition of justice and attempt to frame un-settled science in some gilded moral context... but especially anyone who (clumsily) declares that energy resources are limited.
I will try to explain why I think those ideas are not merely wrong or bad but in light current events, actually deserving of contempt.
First, why any idea may deserve contempt is simply this --- 'we' as a modern society are facing an existential threat. It arises not from a crisis of 'sin' or 'shortage' or even 'hubris', it is just our failure to get off our asses to do something that needs to be done. This is a people-crisis. What needs to be done is different things to different folks, but at present very few practical solutions are being pursued on a time table that befits the threat. Things you could stand up to yourself and say, this could work,
Energy resources are NOT limited. They have never been nor will they ever be. The only thing in short supply at the moment is our own resolve and progress to unlock more or better ones. If people say, "I'm talking about x" then let them talk about x without you but keep one hand on your wallet. If they go on to suggest that additional governance or taxation is necessary for x, press them to pose whether everyone on the planet would adopt this scheme, and get them thinking about what we might do to those who don't go along.
All paths towards global taxation (such as so-called 'carbon credits') or enforced conservation of energy sources lead to war. ALL OF THEM. Everything that has been discussed from Club of Rome to Kyoto to Obama's tactic of declaring CO2 an EPA-regulated poison is a failure in progress. That is --- unless war or control is what you're really after. Hint hint. As a (struggling) American and (modern) human, I feel contempt for things that lead into war. Because war sucks.
I piss in the general direction of anyone who asks me to reduce my "per capita energy usage" for any reason, or even suggests that it might be a solution for anything. This is because the whole idea that anyone on Earth could (or should) make do with less is --- you guessed it --- a path to war.
That is because when you plea to the modern world at large to consume less energy, you are asking people to die. They must die to make your 'models' work. They must die because they fight to the death to avoid your government-imposed child limits (gwarsh, who'da thunk it?) They must die because you are importing their oil and feel the need to install friendly governments. They must die because they insist on breaking your rules, rules that must lead to war to keep the rest of the world in line.
Why do *I* feel rising contempt in general? Because after years of discourse on energy, I feel that a great many people --- while enjoying the gigawatt fruit to its fullest --- are just sitting on their asses. And posing 'solutions' that (ultimately) lead us all to WAR. (It still sucks!)
And they have the GALL to tell me to end my 'recreation
Remember wise old Solomon Recall his history He was the wisest man on Earth And so he cursed the day of his birth He knew that all is vanity
So not much fun was poor Solomon Now most of us would agree We are not much better off than he His brains it was that put him on the spot I thought that brains were good--- Guess not!
The difference between a hot war and a cold war is that during a hot war people do very little prevarication about who's responsible. For example, note that Ukrainian separatists openly boasted about blowing a plane out of the sky when they thought that it was a Ukrainian plane. They didn't start lying about it until they found out that it was a Dutch passenger plane. Cold war attacks are like that from the beginning. They didn't happen. If you can prove they did happen, we didn't do it. We don't know anything about it. If you can prove we did it, then it was a mistake. Also, this is not what I would describe as an actual attack. There were no boots on the ground. No weapons fire. No one died. Economic sabotage is exactly the kind of thing that happens during a cold war precisely because it is easily deniable.
Well said. Spoken like an old school CIA analyst. To clarify for the three-letter gubmint haters out there, that is high praise.
I see a Cold War as a sort of heavy mechanical 'flywheel' that begins to move because it is fed with an assortment of motive and sentiment. It may be started by some actual conflict such as competition for resource or political influence in contested regions, or difference of ideology and the merest suspicious of intent of conquest... it feeds also on distrust... but once it gets going it becomes an object used by both sides to acquire 'ways and means'. It is a funding machine, a hate machine. It supplies momentum and drop-in motives for anything one would wish to allege or ascribe to the 'enemy', even false flag operations. It can win or upset elections. But this is key: once all parties involved gain their footing, all parties involved find ways to make it useful to them. A Cold War is as lucrative as a successful corporation, as threatening as an invading army. It is a shadow-construct that spins off fear and loathing. The Cold War itself is easy to create and cheap to maintain. The true cost of weaponry is not what it costs to make--- it's the cost and effort put behind keeping people convinced that it is necessary. Cold Wars deliver this justification cheaply, for years. They can do this because they thrive on acquired personal prejudice and pride in one's own opinion, which can last a lifetime with little external input. It thrives on and depletes the same cultural energy people would otherwise spend reaching out in curiousity, seeking opportunities that promote cooperation and generally improve life.
I could call it a vampire squid, but the term is taken. Suffice it to say, fuck Cold Wars.
Cold Wars also promote false flag operations because they subvert healthy skepticism. Back in the "good old days ha ha", no terrorist organization would act without ensuring that they claim responsibility in a way that was incontrovertible. This took the form of a telephone or fax delivered to news media just before or at the moment the event occurred. You'd think anyone with a cause would want to ensure that the world knows who is responsible, and why, right?
Something awful happened to the human race between 1970-1980, a real IQ drop. Terrorists stopped calling and claiming responsibility in ways that were verifiable. There was a time--- believe me--- when no self-respecting news organization would even publish a claim of responsibility that had been received after the event. Now not only do they publish any rumor they hear (especially if it pins the act on an evil empire)... what's worse, they are slobbering at the feet of "confidential government sources" and printing it word for word without analysis or even speculation.
The Internet is the best antidote human kind has created to oppose their formation. Oh yeah, it can be used to spread and replicate crap with blinding speed and easily manipulated (I prefer to call them un-vested persons) can create a storm... but it also keeps tyhe lines of communication open for more productive or truthful messages once they arise. The New York Times does not even seem to know what it is doing, that's the saddest part. Perhaps all the adults have left the building.
The submitter is even "skeptical" about the whole issue.
Hello. I'm more than skeptical, I find it alarming. It's Orwellian. Because I remember a time when the US and USSR were one provocation away from open conflict. And as we all knew at the time it would have been ugly and global. I remember when newspapers went out of their way not to even appear to be inviting or inciting conflict. The New York Times now considers itself to be an ankle-biting attack dog for the Obama Administration. They're proud of it. It would merely be pathetic if one could find humor in there somewhere.
What if the attack had appeared to originate from IP address ranges in the UK? Would the Queen's photograph be on Drudge, and would the NY Times accuse Her Majesty's government of hooliganism, or would the reporting take on a whole other angle? Would Drudge dip into his stock photo bin and retrieve some generic 'hacker' illustration instead? They need to consider that, and ask themselves why the response would be different.
People need to ask these questions. It is not enough to shrug off Yellow Journalism when it touches on things that really matter. There must be an appropriate response, even if it is some sort of dialogue taking place elsewhere, such as on the net. Otherwise we run the risk of being carried along (towards war, for example) with people who do NOT question these things.
TL;DR: I'm not clicking this bait.
Too bad no one showed up when you held that March For Apathy. Oh darn--- I was just one click short of earning a free bicycle from the New York Times affiliate program! Curses, foiled again.
[...] from space capability, like tracking breathe and heart rate, and license plates [...] read emanations of electromagnetic frequencies from space or radar, but they're capable of that as well. Which enables tapping of what is being processed by a computer, what is on your screen, USB, Ethernet, telephone, and other cables, without a physical connection to the devices or network in question, again all done from space and long range. Turns out the brain emanations aren't any different, and once intercepted can be passed to neural decoders to extract passcodes, memories, thoughts, and other gogglygook.
Aside from some well developed purely terrestrial distance TEMPEST capability for use against computers and networking devices, I call bullshit on the rest, including the license plates. Tice may have seen things that unnerved him, but (sadly) it is likely that he either embellished the state of the art or (more likely) was made an asset, fed bits and pieces of stories about this kooky dreamland tech in order to excite and incite him into dwelling on these incredible things, to divert his attention away from the more mundane yet heinous act of direct taps and splits.
Even James Bamford has been an 'asset' of theirs over the years. Puzzle Palace [1982] introduced the NSA to a whole generation of young folk interested in intelligence careers, focusing on its broad global reach and exciting technical resources. And yet it also contained a clear and dire warning that a charter-be-damned domestic spy apparatus was being built -- I personally believe this revelation was leaked from NSA insiders (probably close to retirement) who did not like the agency's new direction. Body of Secrets [2001] was more sedate about this, but it also contained a gripping account of the 1967 USS Liberty incident that stirred controversy, but again like the warning, a story the NSA insiders wished to be told.
I really hated Men In Black--- that movie stuck in my craw So arrogant and smug as they tampered with minds in parody of due process of law.
There is a special brand of stupid that only affects those who are smart. By their own hands they have brought this great evil in which they knowingly play a part.
NSA is to gather blackmail, is all--- for when and why--- they haven't a clue. Just following orders for the almighty buck ---they fuck their own children, fuck me and fuck you.
And so to St. Peter I must say They learned their lesson well--- They continue to serve today's NSA so send them on to hell!
Oath breakers! Get the hell out of there and blow the lid off this thing while there is still time!
The "cloud" is an extremely centralized way of doing computing. There's no other way of looking at it. Basically, people/corporations give their data to (a few) other corporations to store in their enormous server halls. That's pretty much the definition of centralization.
It's also a movement to decouple function from what had been mostly single location single point of failure 'hosting'. A proper cloud may not offer provider diversity but it should offer a greater resilience to localized disaster. Consider it to be a step away from one (physical) point of failure towards 'zero'.
Our points of failure today are oil, coal and natural gas, not the corporations that serve them.
Too many people tend to think that intermittent energy sources are the solution to the 'big' problem, and they go on to spend all their thinking (and activist) time there. In fact, these sources have been a diversion from the real problem which is, can we come up with a path that could take every one of the world's 7 billion people to a level of technical affluence of, say, the United States, with diminished or no fossil fuels It's a mix of personal and heavily industrial energy draw. It's water treatment and distribution, sewage collection and treatment. Africa wants a grid.
The answer with just solar and wind and as-yet undeveloped storage technology and an incredible amount of manufacturing and capital is -- eventually at best. But probably never at worst because we will not be given enough time to do it before fossil fuel declines into the 'global war for resources' stage. Which will make today look like happy fun day.
Dismissing Thorium at this point in time is dangerous because there is barely enough time left to develop and scale it. If you're one of the few as I who also consider it vital that the United States take the lead -- rather than go further into debt to buy reactors from another country that is faster on the ball yet not necessarily as capable as we must become -- then time is really short. Fission is easy to do right because there are no 'surprises', only well defined problems to solve and challenges to be met.
Anyone who wants to go with a solution that could achieve this for a few billion people at best might wonder, what then will the remaining billions do? They would not go gentle into the good night if there is a light burning in the distance. Hope you're ready for company.
Only with a grand surplus of available energy in hand do we all stand a chance. Affordable, cheap energy is the only 'sustainable' form of wealth creation because only by increasing wealth by lowering the cost of living (personal and corporate) -- not by borrowing and taxation -- do things become possible tomorrow that are not possible today.
Thanks kindly for not mentioning Christmas fruitcakes in your post. If a whole generation would pass without anyone being compared to one then production would steadily decrease and the world could be fruitcake-free by 2050. Except for samples stored in deep freeze in meme warfare labs, of course.
That kind of argument can go both ways. When one single power line goes out, whole neighborhoods go without power. If the average household had a solar array with a Tesla (or other battery powered car plugged in), it could keep on running whether or not there were major interruptions in the power grid.
I get the dream, that is my dream too and it's a beautiful dream! And I agree that our species' approach to energy should be a decentralized network of push and pull. We push into grids when we can and pull when we must. But as you work outwards from house to neighborhood to region to country there must be some point at which there is a massive surplus of energy available to kick in when needed. If there isn't then the whole house of cards will tumble. Yet we can achieve it.
Your analogy comparing the electric grid with the computer cloud is valid and the replies dissing you for it fail to point out that if the power grid was a ring of DC interconnects then there would be no intermittency problems with variable sources, near 100% efficiency. Every concept put forward from 'net metering' to regional autonomy (which as you point put would be nice) would work!
But the grid we have is not that DC grid. Yet. I see a path leading there but it does not start with these micro solar inter-connect techniques that (badly) affect our resonant grid and suck resources and innovative attention away from the existential threat: reliance on fossil fuels. We need to solve the base load energy problem to survive, so modern civilization may live long enough to achieve these goals.
So when I rant on solar I am really ranting on the lack of focus and effort to solve the bigger problems. Sorry about that.
THE MANY: why don't [greedy, evil] utilities just build smart grids and [benevolent] governments just enforce buy-back at retail? Or [to make up for perceived greediness] more than retail? Plus [free money] incentives for home owners in Pleasantville [no multifamily unit or slum dwellings need apply] to buy the stuff. And [one in a hundred thousand, owns own house free and clear, grossing $70+k/yr] solar home owner says, but it works for me.
THE FEW: Grid already running near peak capacity because it was never built out for surplus, it was built as needed. Energy costs for base load generation plants is volatile and variable. Capital spent on new base load generation NOT re-designing and re-building infrastructure in Your Little Neighborhood.
THE MANY: but solar and wind generate during [daytime not night, never mind Winter] peak hours and so will we once the government gives us free money to buy all this great solar stuff so it's all good and when this [unlikely miracle] happens those base load plants can just bug off. While we're operational that is. We'll stay connected to the grid for old time's sake and to sell our power to the [evil] power company. Storage batteries will come along and will solve everything. For a day at least.
THE FEW: Who's willing to run some the odds that a geographically dispersed network of solar/wind hipsters each feeding a little bit into the grid is sure to keep it stable and keep this 24x7 factory running? What are the odds of a cascading domino failure triggered by the first untoward event, where the hipsters and tiny federally-subsidized hipster companies will drop off the grid quickly, like flies, to satisfy their own local needs?
THE MANY: Fuck the factory, and fuck those other grid people who do not embrace small scale or personal power solutions. They're probably wasting loads of energy anyway.
THE FEW: Okay, imagine trying to light a sports stadium with ten million tiny Christmas tree bulbs. The kind wired in series where whole sections go dark when one bulb fails. Now imagine that on the supply side, with a truly incomprehensible number of possible points of failure in place, instead of the historically reliable method of a few, professionally maintained gigawatt plants that generate baseload energy 24x7...
THE MANY: Sounds great! It would probably be good for the planet too.
THE FEW: [double facepalm] Troll us into oblivion why don't you.
My washing machine has a controller board with the numbers erased off the embedded CPU.
My washing machine has a corroded useless controller board with a rotary switch whose spring loaded contacts failed, then fused. A burnt out hot water solenoid valve and a broken load weight sensor.
That is why my washing machine has a hole drilled in the panel in which I have mounted a double pole double throw center off toggle switch. Click it down to wash, up to spin. Click to center and it turns off. It's just a DC motor that agitates or spins based on direction. There is a garden hose hooked to the hot water tap I use to fill it. You can also do a great water saving spin+rinse by spraying inside the drum as it is spinning. It goes when I tell it to go and does not stop until I stop it.
I am happy with my toggle switch driven washing machine and it will probably last for years beyond anyone else's. I could make a joke about someone needing to replace their washing machine because it has no buttons and they lost the infrared wireless remote but it's not funny. There's probably a predatory engineer out there right now devising such an abomination.
My car requires proprietary tools to fix.
'93 Chevy standard six. I don't do engines, but every bumpkin genius around these parts (and yes they really are mechanical geniuses!) can fix it.
Hold on... I just had an epiphany about why manhole covers are round - give me a sec, I think I'm going to submit it...
They could also be pointy or rounded equilateral triangles, leading to an interesting and annoying and dangerous pointy down dangle wedgie situation. But what is most annoying is that many sealed round lids have no lifter points on the underside, what were they thinking, so if it flips over before it settles into the ring you are reduced to prying opposite edges while wishing for a simple clamping magnet.
The other possibility is that the planes will contain a cell site...
Actually you are connected to a Stingray device that is contained in a briefcase in the overhead compartment above seat 6A.
That is why all web addresses are redirected to goatse, and all attempts at voice calls connect to this recording. Bing! Another text message! Cat Facts again.
There's more "things go wrong... in spaaace!" novels and movies than you can shake a stick at. During these boring space creature features I wind up doing a freeze frame on the movie.
I then mentally leave the room and walk around down the space station's corridors, look out the windows, maybe browse the tech manuals for the station. Then I key up some popular music these people of the future listen to, go to the space john (not much has changed) and visit the hydroponics bays. Have some lunch. If it's a lunar colony I don a suit and go play some golf, take a buggy ride. Then I strap on wings and climb the giant trees that fill the dome and jump off and fly.
Eventually I mentally return to the room that is frozen in time on the screen, take a deep breath and un-pause the movie. And the gallant characters resume their battle with the Space Menace and mostly become eaten or horribly killed and all the precious equipment becomes ruined in the process and everything blows up.
Life can be lonely sometimes when you're not into the things that other people enjoy.
And the cradle itself is stupidly sculpted to match the remote, causing a different problem.
YES, this is confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origin.
At the dawn of the 21st century our LSI chip and circuit board designs were very advanced but rectilinear in the traditional sense. Ergonomics was understood to be about proper posture and comfortable wrist action.
Then a spaceship landed, probably in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. Traveling buyers and consumer electronics engineers were lured into tiny stalls with the promise of "see video with new product idea" where they were subjected to various experiments... and impregnated with alien spermatozoa which began (subtly at first) to reroute their neural nets.
And the general shape of consumer products began to change. Corners were rounded, globular forms emerged and things had been stackable and rackable became rounded and contoured. Today you will typically see electronic engineers called into conference where they are shown a molded plastic prototype with pseudopods, eyelike globes, tripod feet and a long slender body with a bright blinking blue LED in the center. They are instructed to "build a product inside it." Vestigial body forms of our alien overlords. Now the term ergonomic design has been adapted to mean any shape that would confuse and terrify a consumer from the 60s and 70s.
Things that are shaped like hands do not necessarily fit comfortably in the hand.
I welcome the rise of 3D printing, so I may use it to print rectangular enclosures in which to re-mount these electronics. So I may stack them once again.
A whopping 10% of new buildings will have had their shingles replaced by 'smart' shingles which incorporate solar cells. Freakin' solar roofs! Then in a devastating flurry of bank foreclosures, rent-to-own house flippees and general financial ruin, leaks, hazardous conditions and owner angst, replaced again with... shingles. There will be at least one (1) closet full of corroded electronics, taped off wires in the main panel that used to go to "that thing". And in the kids' bedroom a silent panel on the wall that becomes the instrument panel of a spaceship.
If the presence of that silent panel helps kids to dream of going into space again, it will all be worth it.
So carry on. It's just that as a renter with no savings who would have been tapping at the middle class by now if it were not for the general economic outlook, who had to help the landlord dig up the sewer tap and re-plumb the bathroom to reduce the rent... all this hoo-hah to replace reliable wire-delivered base load energy with... toys that add complexity to a simple energy equation... seems outlandish.
It is utterly chilling to see educated people publically admire a tyrannical government, and openly wish we had the same in America. There are trees and ropes waiting for you kind of people.
However, hominization takes place on a much shorter time scale (couple of ten million years), so another intelligent species could still arise. Who knows, maybe the rats will succeed where the apes failed.
I personally witnessed a case of greatly accelerated hominization:
Day 1: odd pink lump Day 2: lip smacking goober Month 1: squaller with hiccups Month 3: large cranium drooler Month 4: creepy crawler Month 9: bipedal menace Year 2: cute backtalking tyrant Year 5: regal household overlord Year 10: why why why machine Year 13: critter Year 17: varmit Year 18: best friend
I have noticed in myself and several others an extremely strong fear-reflex to orange eyeshine. The eyes need to appear suddenly, they must be perceived as being near, and most interesting -- it seems to peak out at an ruddy orange color. Blue and green are surprising, yellow can be alarming but into the orange there is an extreme response, a silent 'snap' in the upper spine like an electric shock followed by a sensation of warmth/adrenaline response. As a kid I would shine my flashlight into the bushes as I walked at night to find cats. Countless times I caught yellow or green reflections (even up close) I'd smile and say "gotcha!" Then one night I got a shine that was a dull ruddy orange, I think it was an old tomcat with cataracts... I was riveted to the spot with symptoms described above, with great effort I stepped backward then sideways, and (though I knew it was just a cat) found myself running home.
Didn't think about it for years... until I encountered a young girl who loved Fantasia 2000. She'd watch it over and over. But as one particular moment approached she would hide her eyes under a blanket or even jump behind the couch. It was this moment. After the Firebird rose up moments later she'd be fine, sitting down watching intently. I started asking around. At least one other person had a similar reaction to orange eyeshine, and several others when given a choice chose orange as the eye color they'd least like to encounter at night.
This led me into a theory. Imagine paleo-humans around a campfire. The adults exhausted or asleep from the strenuous activities of the day... but the children are alert and awake, keeping watch. They are watching for eyeshine on the fringes of camp. This makes sense because it is the children that predators are watching. Whether or not they were tasked with this duty, or even if it was an "eye game", it may be that we are descended from a successful lineage of children who kept watch at night and successfully sounded the alarm.
Before people huddled around campfires this eyeshine predator fear response could not have been so strongly tuned to orange as it seems to be. Reflected moonlight may give you a faint flash of eyeshine if conditions are right. But when you are between the fire and the eyes it would be really bright, and a predominately orange fire would reflect mainly its own color. Only with the modern electric light would we 'see' those brilliant greens and yellows. So an eyeshine predator fear response would have developed after we tamed fire. As such it might be the most recent base instinct, and because it arises from firelight -- exclusively human.
I have another theory too, it was the domestication of the canine that initially allowed us and our children to sleep through the night, leading into the elaborate REM sleep and dream cycle of modern humans that acts as a wellspring of intelligent creativity.
[$2000] you have no idea what you are talking about
Yeah I did pick that out of my backside, could have added a couple of zeroes. But hmm...
If every one of the 700 million currently assigned numbers in North America makes 3 calls an hour on average, that's ~1.5 trillion call records per month. Plus duration and a bit of geolocation data if available, we're only interested in unique number queries (not ranges) so keys are hashable, no strings, write once read forever... this is really a best case database.
Yup, need to add a zero to buy the disk space. $20,000. Add another zero for a cloudlike platform with several years' data that's not down a third of the time for record maintenance.
But nature always finds a way. Teeth become stronger and sharper to pierce the hide directly, armored gullets and crops evolve to subject swallowed prey to slow grinding until the hide is pierced and the juices leak out. Suction arms pin the prey to rock as a horny beak drills through the exoskeleton. Birds lift the prey into the sky and let gravity do the hard work, gathering the yummy bits from the wreckage.
The military should be focusing its research on making soldiers better at hiding, smelling and tasting really bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? It is Darwin time. Let the fittest survive and the first to die to get a unit in her name, according to the old custom.
Here is a map of intelligent civilizations who have successfully reproduced (by experiment in the laboratory) the conditions for creating Gamma Ray Bursts. No one knows whether this map is up to date or even functional because it requires the installation of Microsoft Silverlight, which is only used by Netflix users who would rather watch movies than ping the dying remnants of failed civilizations. Our knowledge of Gamma Ray Bursts is incomplete because astrophysicists have devoted far more time to avoiding Silverlight, which they consider to be a greater danger to life here on Earth.
Here is the list of successful lab experiments observed to date. Due to obvious Y2K errors in the naming convention of GRBs attempts to collate this data over the centuries have been unsuccessful, leading to time paradoxes and fistfights.
The light curves of GRB events ech contain a complex pulse-coded message placed there by the Grand Architect that says in effect, "Whatever you do... don't do this." While the signals have not been decoded, their diversity suggests that there are a number of things that one just should not do. Except for plot on the bottom right which cannot be right, I did that in High School.
Because the characteristics of celestial GRBs mimic the explosion of fission bombs, these bursts are Nature's Way to push paranoid little civilizations over the edge to go full-out on one another during nuclear adolescence. There is a reality show out there that showcases one of these every week with a laugh track dropped in at every retaliatory response, rousing applause at the end.
Let me check, maybe it's on Netflix...
That is because when you plea to the modern world at large to consume less energy, you are asking people to die. [corrected link]
Oops, I intended to link to the entire Connections episode S01E01 "The Trigger Effect" [1978]. It is one of the finest hours ever produced for television, and it accurately portrays the entire world's dependence on modern technology.
Modern thinkers often feel empowered to detach massive surplus energy from the 'things' it has made possible. For example --- imagining an African clinic with a tiny but comfortable bit of energy available --- and (somehow) stocked with antibiotics and modern machines. It is a grossly distorted, even malevolent vision.
There is no rolling back from the goal of delivering a level of world energy per capita equal to its most voracious users. It will not work now that the world has glimpsed its effect, and some are in possession of it. Not even a little bit.
[Stover] Economists and energy experts shy away from issues of equity and morality, but climate change and environmental justice are inseparable: It's impossible to talk intelligently about climate without discussing how to distribute limited energy resources.
Just what I needed today, someone who uses 'friendly UN language' in an earnest attempt to empower me to speak intelligently about climate. To do so I need to add the term environmental justice to my vocabulary. There is another pill to swallow too, the implied mandate that someone must decide how to distribute limited energy resources.
I piss in the general direction of anyone who would impose such a nebulous definition of justice and attempt to frame un-settled science in some gilded moral context... but especially anyone who (clumsily) declares that energy resources are limited.
I will try to explain why I think those ideas are not merely wrong or bad but in light current events, actually deserving of contempt.
First, why any idea may deserve contempt is simply this --- 'we' as a modern society are facing an existential threat. It arises not from a crisis of 'sin' or 'shortage' or even 'hubris', it is just our failure to get off our asses to do something that needs to be done. This is a people-crisis. What needs to be done is different things to different folks, but at present very few practical solutions are being pursued on a time table that befits the threat. Things you could stand up to yourself and say, this could work,
Energy resources are NOT limited. They have never been nor will they ever be. The only thing in short supply at the moment is our own resolve and progress to unlock more or better ones. If people say, "I'm talking about x" then let them talk about x without you but keep one hand on your wallet. If they go on to suggest that additional governance or taxation is necessary for x, press them to pose whether everyone on the planet would adopt this scheme, and get them thinking about what we might do to those who don't go along.
All paths towards global taxation (such as so-called 'carbon credits') or enforced conservation of energy sources lead to war. ALL OF THEM. Everything that has been discussed from Club of Rome to Kyoto to Obama's tactic of declaring CO2 an EPA-regulated poison is a failure in progress. That is --- unless war or control is what you're really after. Hint hint. As a (struggling) American and (modern) human, I feel contempt for things that lead into war. Because war sucks.
I piss in the general direction of anyone who asks me to reduce my "per capita energy usage" for any reason, or even suggests that it might be a solution for anything. This is because the whole idea that anyone on Earth could (or should) make do with less is --- you guessed it --- a path to war.
That is because when you plea to the modern world at large to consume less energy, you are asking people to die. They must die to make your 'models' work. They must die because they fight to the death to avoid your government-imposed child limits (gwarsh, who'da thunk it?) They must die because you are importing their oil and feel the need to install friendly governments. They must die because they insist on breaking your rules, rules that must lead to war to keep the rest of the world in line.
Why do *I* feel rising contempt in general? Because after years of discourse on energy, I feel that a great many people --- while enjoying the gigawatt fruit to its fullest --- are just sitting on their asses. And posing 'solutions' that (ultimately) lead us all to WAR. (It still sucks!)
And they have the GALL to tell me to end my 'recreation
Prepare for the experiment:
1. Gather one hour and fifty-one minutes of food and drink
2. Get comfortable
Perform the experiment:
4. Visit this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVCbIzeQb30
5. Report results.
SPOILER: AT 1:28:33 he says the word, "inconceivable"
If you are a machine that turns itself off , please do so.
Remember wise old Solomon
Recall his history
He was the wisest man on Earth
And so he cursed the day of his birth
He knew that all is vanity
So not much fun was poor Solomon
Now most of us would agree
We are not much better off than he
His brains it was that put him on the spot
I thought that brains were good--- Guess not!
~Threepenny Opera
The difference between a hot war and a cold war is that during a hot war people do very little prevarication about who's responsible. For example, note that Ukrainian separatists openly boasted about blowing a plane out of the sky when they thought that it was a Ukrainian plane. They didn't start lying about it until they found out that it was a Dutch passenger plane. Cold war attacks are like that from the beginning. They didn't happen. If you can prove they did happen, we didn't do it. We don't know anything about it. If you can prove we did it, then it was a mistake. Also, this is not what I would describe as an actual attack. There were no boots on the ground. No weapons fire. No one died. Economic sabotage is exactly the kind of thing that happens during a cold war precisely because it is easily deniable.
Well said. Spoken like an old school CIA analyst. To clarify for the three-letter gubmint haters out there, that is high praise.
I see a Cold War as a sort of heavy mechanical 'flywheel' that begins to move because it is fed with an assortment of motive and sentiment. It may be started by some actual conflict such as competition for resource or political influence in contested regions, or difference of ideology and the merest suspicious of intent of conquest... it feeds also on distrust... but once it gets going it becomes an object used by both sides to acquire 'ways and means'. It is a funding machine, a hate machine. It supplies momentum and drop-in motives for anything one would wish to allege or ascribe to the 'enemy', even false flag operations. It can win or upset elections. But this is key: once all parties involved gain their footing, all parties involved find ways to make it useful to them. A Cold War is as lucrative as a successful corporation, as threatening as an invading army. It is a shadow-construct that spins off fear and loathing. The Cold War itself is easy to create and cheap to maintain. The true cost of weaponry is not what it costs to make--- it's the cost and effort put behind keeping people convinced that it is necessary. Cold Wars deliver this justification cheaply, for years. They can do this because they thrive on acquired personal prejudice and pride in one's own opinion, which can last a lifetime with little external input. It thrives on and depletes the same cultural energy people would otherwise spend reaching out in curiousity, seeking opportunities that promote cooperation and generally improve life.
I could call it a vampire squid, but the term is taken. Suffice it to say, fuck Cold Wars.
Cold Wars also promote false flag operations because they subvert healthy skepticism. Back in the "good old days ha ha", no terrorist organization would act without ensuring that they claim responsibility in a way that was incontrovertible. This took the form of a telephone or fax delivered to news media just before or at the moment the event occurred. You'd think anyone with a cause would want to ensure that the world knows who is responsible, and why, right?
Something awful happened to the human race between 1970-1980, a real IQ drop. Terrorists stopped calling and claiming responsibility in ways that were verifiable. There was a time--- believe me--- when no self-respecting news organization would even publish a claim of responsibility that had been received after the event. Now not only do they publish any rumor they hear (especially if it pins the act on an evil empire)... what's worse, they are slobbering at the feet of "confidential government sources" and printing it word for word without analysis or even speculation.
The Internet is the best antidote human kind has created to oppose their formation. Oh yeah, it can be used to spread and replicate crap with blinding speed and easily manipulated (I prefer to call them un-vested persons) can create a storm... but it also keeps tyhe lines of communication open for more productive or truthful messages once they arise. The New York Times does not even seem to know what it is doing, that's the saddest part. Perhaps all the adults have left the building.
The submitter is even "skeptical" about the whole issue.
Hello. I'm more than skeptical, I find it alarming. It's Orwellian. Because I remember a time when the US and USSR were one provocation away from open conflict. And as we all knew at the time it would have been ugly and global. I remember when newspapers went out of their way not to even appear to be inviting or inciting conflict. The New York Times now considers itself to be an ankle-biting attack dog for the Obama Administration. They're proud of it. It would merely be pathetic if one could find humor in there somewhere.
What if the attack had appeared to originate from IP address ranges in the UK? Would the Queen's photograph be on Drudge, and would the NY Times accuse Her Majesty's government of hooliganism, or would the reporting take on a whole other angle? Would Drudge dip into his stock photo bin and retrieve some generic 'hacker' illustration instead? They need to consider that, and ask themselves why the response would be different.
People need to ask these questions. It is not enough to shrug off Yellow Journalism when it touches on things that really matter. There must be an appropriate response, even if it is some sort of dialogue taking place elsewhere, such as on the net. Otherwise we run the risk of being carried along (towards war, for example) with people who do NOT question these things.
TL;DR: I'm not clicking this bait.
Too bad no one showed up when you held that March For Apathy. Oh darn--- I was just one click short of earning a free bicycle from the New York Times affiliate program! Curses, foiled again.
[...] from space capability, like tracking breathe and heart rate, and license plates [...] read emanations of electromagnetic frequencies from space or radar, but they're capable of that as well. Which enables tapping of what is being processed by a computer, what is on your screen, USB, Ethernet, telephone, and other cables, without a physical connection to the devices or network in question, again all done from space and long range. Turns out the brain emanations aren't any different, and once intercepted can be passed to neural decoders to extract passcodes, memories, thoughts, and other gogglygook.
Aside from some well developed purely terrestrial distance TEMPEST capability for use against computers and networking devices, I call bullshit on the rest, including the license plates. Tice may have seen things that unnerved him, but (sadly) it is likely that he either embellished the state of the art or (more likely) was made an asset, fed bits and pieces of stories about this kooky dreamland tech in order to excite and incite him into dwelling on these incredible things, to divert his attention away from the more mundane yet heinous act of direct taps and splits.
Folks like Thomas Drake, Bill Binney and Mark Klein hold more credibility.
Even James Bamford has been an 'asset' of theirs over the years. Puzzle Palace [1982] introduced the NSA to a whole generation of young folk interested in intelligence careers, focusing on its broad global reach and exciting technical resources. And yet it also contained a clear and dire warning that a charter-be-damned domestic spy apparatus was being built -- I personally believe this revelation was leaked from NSA insiders (probably close to retirement) who did not like the agency's new direction. Body of Secrets [2001] was more sedate about this, but it also contained a gripping account of the 1967 USS Liberty incident that stirred controversy, but again like the warning, a story the NSA insiders wished to be told.
Down the rabbit hole we go.
Too bad.
I really hated Men In Black---
that movie stuck in my craw
So arrogant and smug
as they tampered with minds
in parody of due process of law.
There is a special brand of stupid
that only affects those who are smart.
By their own hands they have brought this great evil
in which they knowingly play a part.
NSA is to gather blackmail, is all---
for when and why--- they haven't a clue.
Just following orders for the almighty buck
---they fuck
their own children, fuck me and fuck you.
And so to St. Peter I must say
They learned their lesson well---
They continue to serve today's NSA
so send them on to hell!
Oath breakers! Get the hell out of there and blow the lid off this thing while there is still time!
(But first... ya gotta get mad!)
The "cloud" is an extremely centralized way of doing computing. There's no other way of looking at it. Basically, people/corporations give their data to (a few) other corporations to store in their enormous server halls. That's pretty much the definition of centralization.
It's also a movement to decouple function from what had been mostly single location single point of failure 'hosting'. A proper cloud may not offer provider diversity but it should offer a greater resilience to localized disaster. Consider it to be a step away from one (physical) point of failure towards 'zero'.
Our points of failure today are oil, coal and natural gas, not the corporations that serve them.
Too many people tend to think that intermittent energy sources are the solution to the 'big' problem, and they go on to spend all their thinking (and activist) time there. In fact, these sources have been a diversion from the real problem which is, can we come up with a path that could take every one of the world's 7 billion people to a level of technical affluence of, say, the United States, with diminished or no fossil fuels It's a mix of personal and heavily industrial energy draw. It's water treatment and distribution, sewage collection and treatment. Africa wants a grid.
The answer with just solar and wind and as-yet undeveloped storage technology and an incredible amount of manufacturing and capital is -- eventually at best. But probably never at worst because we will not be given enough time to do it before fossil fuel declines into the 'global war for resources' stage. Which will make today look like happy fun day.
Dismissing Thorium at this point in time is dangerous because there is barely enough time left to develop and scale it. If you're one of the few as I who also consider it vital that the United States take the lead -- rather than go further into debt to buy reactors from another country that is faster on the ball yet not necessarily as capable as we must become -- then time is really short. Fission is easy to do right because there are no 'surprises', only well defined problems to solve and challenges to be met.
Anyone who wants to go with a solution that could achieve this for a few billion people at best might wonder, what then will the remaining billions do? They would not go gentle into the good night if there is a light burning in the distance. Hope you're ready for company.
Only with a grand surplus of available energy in hand do we all stand a chance. Affordable, cheap energy is the only 'sustainable' form of wealth creation because only by increasing wealth by lowering the cost of living (personal and corporate) -- not by borrowing and taxation -- do things become possible tomorrow that are not possible today.
Thanks kindly for not mentioning Christmas fruitcakes in your post. If a whole generation would pass without anyone being compared to one then production would steadily decrease and the world could be fruitcake-free by 2050. Except for samples stored in deep freeze in meme warfare labs, of course.
That kind of argument can go both ways. When one single power line goes out, whole neighborhoods go without power. If the average household had a solar array with a Tesla (or other battery powered car plugged in), it could keep on running whether or not there were major interruptions in the power grid.
I get the dream, that is my dream too and it's a beautiful dream! And I agree that our species' approach to energy should be a decentralized network of push and pull. We push into grids when we can and pull when we must. But as you work outwards from house to neighborhood to region to country there must be some point at which there is a massive surplus of energy available to kick in when needed. If there isn't then the whole house of cards will tumble. Yet we can achieve it.
Your analogy comparing the electric grid with the computer cloud is valid and the replies dissing you for it fail to point out that if the power grid was a ring of DC interconnects then there would be no intermittency problems with variable sources, near 100% efficiency. Every concept put forward from 'net metering' to regional autonomy (which as you point put would be nice) would work!
But the grid we have is not that DC grid. Yet. I see a path leading there but it does not start with these micro solar inter-connect techniques that (badly) affect our resonant grid and suck resources and innovative attention away from the existential threat: reliance on fossil fuels. We need to solve the base load energy problem to survive, so modern civilization may live long enough to achieve these goals.
So when I rant on solar I am really ranting on the lack of focus and effort to solve the bigger problems. Sorry about that.
This story was posted a couple of days ago:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
Yes, which is rediscussion of even older topic [26-Dec-2013] Utilities Fight Back Against Solar Energy Well... if stories can be redished then I can recup hiccup my own muckraking comment from it [evil laugh] Where will it end??
---cut here---
SO to summarize every /. solar energy thread...
THE MANY: why don't [greedy, evil] utilities just build smart grids and [benevolent] governments just enforce buy-back at retail? Or [to make up for perceived greediness] more than retail? Plus [free money] incentives for home owners in Pleasantville [no multifamily unit or slum dwellings need apply] to buy the stuff. And [one in a hundred thousand, owns own house free and clear, grossing $70+k/yr] solar home owner says, but it works for me.
THE FEW: Grid already running near peak capacity because it was never built out for surplus, it was built as needed. Energy costs for base load generation plants is volatile and variable. Capital spent on new base load generation NOT re-designing and re-building infrastructure in Your Little Neighborhood.
THE MANY: but solar and wind generate during [daytime not night, never mind Winter] peak hours and so will we once the government gives us free money to buy all this great solar stuff so it's all good and when this [unlikely miracle] happens those base load plants can just bug off. While we're operational that is. We'll stay connected to the grid for old time's sake and to sell our power to the [evil] power company. Storage batteries will come along and will solve everything. For a day at least.
THE FEW: Who's willing to run some the odds that a geographically dispersed network of solar/wind hipsters each feeding a little bit into the grid is sure to keep it stable and keep this 24x7 factory running? What are the odds of a cascading domino failure triggered by the first untoward event, where the hipsters and tiny federally-subsidized hipster companies will drop off the grid quickly, like flies, to satisfy their own local needs?
THE MANY: Fuck the factory, and fuck those other grid people who do not embrace small scale or personal power solutions. They're probably wasting loads of energy anyway.
THE FEW: Okay, imagine trying to light a sports stadium with ten million tiny Christmas tree bulbs. The kind wired in series where whole sections go dark when one bulb fails. Now imagine that on the supply side, with a truly incomprehensible number of possible points of failure in place, instead of the historically reliable method of a few, professionally maintained gigawatt plants that generate baseload energy 24x7...
THE MANY: Sounds great! It would probably be good for the planet too.
THE FEW: [double facepalm] Troll us into oblivion why don't you.
___
Obligatory bump to the Thorium Alliance and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
My washing machine has a controller board with the numbers erased off the embedded CPU.
My washing machine has a corroded useless controller board with a rotary switch whose spring loaded contacts failed, then fused. A burnt out hot water solenoid valve and a broken load weight sensor.
That is why my washing machine has a hole drilled in the panel in which I have mounted a double pole double throw center off toggle switch. Click it down to wash, up to spin. Click to center and it turns off. It's just a DC motor that agitates or spins based on direction. There is a garden hose hooked to the hot water tap I use to fill it. You can also do a great water saving spin+rinse by spraying inside the drum as it is spinning. It goes when I tell it to go and does not stop until I stop it.
I am happy with my toggle switch driven washing machine and it will probably last for years beyond anyone else's. I could make a joke about someone needing to replace their washing machine because it has no buttons and they lost the infrared wireless remote but it's not funny. There's probably a predatory engineer out there right now devising such an abomination.
My car requires proprietary tools to fix.
'93 Chevy standard six. I don't do engines, but every bumpkin genius around these parts (and yes they really are mechanical geniuses!) can fix it.
Hold on... I just had an epiphany about why manhole covers are round - give me a sec, I think I'm going to submit it...
They could also be pointy or rounded equilateral triangles, leading to an interesting and annoying and dangerous pointy down dangle wedgie situation. But what is most annoying is that many sealed round lids have no lifter points on the underside, what were they thinking, so if it flips over before it settles into the ring you are reduced to prying opposite edges while wishing for a simple clamping magnet.
The other possibility is that the planes will contain a cell site...
Actually you are connected to a Stingray device that is contained in a briefcase in the overhead compartment above seat 6A.
That is why all web addresses are redirected to goatse, and all attempts at voice calls connect to this recording. Bing! Another text message! Cat Facts again.
If you're interested in a hard sci-fi near-future look at how a non-catastrophic, well planned mission with unforgettable personalities and epic adventures, I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy: Red, Blue, Green Mars. There's catastrophe in there too but it occurs only occasionally.
There's more "things go wrong... in spaaace!" novels and movies than you can shake a stick at. During these boring space creature features I wind up doing a freeze frame on the movie.
I then mentally leave the room and walk around down the space station's corridors, look out the windows, maybe browse the tech manuals for the station. Then I key up some popular music these people of the future listen to, go to the space john (not much has changed) and visit the hydroponics bays. Have some lunch. If it's a lunar colony I don a suit and go play some golf, take a buggy ride. Then I strap on wings and climb the giant trees that fill the dome and jump off and fly.
Eventually I mentally return to the room that is frozen in time on the screen, take a deep breath and un-pause the movie. And the gallant characters resume their battle with the Space Menace and mostly become eaten or horribly killed and all the precious equipment becomes ruined in the process and everything blows up.
Life can be lonely sometimes when you're not into the things that other people enjoy.
And the cradle itself is stupidly sculpted to match the remote, causing a different problem.
YES, this is confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origin.
At the dawn of the 21st century our LSI chip and circuit board designs were very advanced but rectilinear in the traditional sense. Ergonomics was understood to be about proper posture and comfortable wrist action.
Then a spaceship landed, probably in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. Traveling buyers and consumer electronics engineers were lured into tiny stalls with the promise of "see video with new product idea" where they were subjected to various experiments... and impregnated with alien spermatozoa which began (subtly at first) to reroute their neural nets.
And the general shape of consumer products began to change. Corners were rounded, globular forms emerged and things had been stackable and rackable became rounded and contoured. Today you will typically see electronic engineers called into conference where they are shown a molded plastic prototype with pseudopods, eyelike globes, tripod feet and a long slender body with a bright blinking blue LED in the center. They are instructed to "build a product inside it." Vestigial body forms of our alien overlords. Now the term ergonomic design has been adapted to mean any shape that would confuse and terrify a consumer from the 60s and 70s.
Things that are shaped like hands do not necessarily fit comfortably in the hand.
I welcome the rise of 3D printing, so I may use it to print rectangular enclosures in which to re-mount these electronics. So I may stack them once again.
A whopping 10% of new buildings will have had their shingles replaced by 'smart' shingles which incorporate solar cells. Freakin' solar roofs! Then in a devastating flurry of bank foreclosures, rent-to-own house flippees and general financial ruin, leaks, hazardous conditions and owner angst, replaced again with... shingles. There will be at least one (1) closet full of corroded electronics, taped off wires in the main panel that used to go to "that thing". And in the kids' bedroom a silent panel on the wall that becomes the instrument panel of a spaceship.
If the presence of that silent panel helps kids to dream of going into space again, it will all be worth it.
So carry on. It's just that as a renter with no savings who would have been tapping at the middle class by now if it were not for the general economic outlook, who had to help the landlord dig up the sewer tap and re-plumb the bathroom to reduce the rent... all this hoo-hah to replace reliable wire-delivered base load energy with... toys that add complexity to a simple energy equation... seems outlandish.
I'm a techie and love science but also a realist.
[dancing like Snoopy]
[pause, stand erect, somber face]
It is utterly chilling to see educated people publically admire a tyrannical government, and openly wish we had the same in America. There are trees and ropes waiting for you kind of people.
[dancing like Snoopy]
However, hominization takes place on a much shorter time scale (couple of ten million years), so another intelligent species could still arise. Who knows, maybe the rats will succeed where the apes failed.
I personally witnessed a case of greatly accelerated hominization:
Day 1: odd pink lump
Day 2: lip smacking goober
Month 1: squaller with hiccups
Month 3: large cranium drooler
Month 4: creepy crawler
Month 9: bipedal menace
Year 2: cute backtalking tyrant
Year 5: regal household overlord
Year 10: why why why machine
Year 13: critter
Year 17: varmit
Year 18: best friend
I have noticed in myself and several others an extremely strong fear-reflex to orange eyeshine. The eyes need to appear suddenly, they must be perceived as being near, and most interesting -- it seems to peak out at an ruddy orange color. Blue and green are surprising, yellow can be alarming but into the orange there is an extreme response, a silent 'snap' in the upper spine like an electric shock followed by a sensation of warmth/adrenaline response. As a kid I would shine my flashlight into the bushes as I walked at night to find cats. Countless times I caught yellow or green reflections (even up close) I'd smile and say "gotcha!" Then one night I got a shine that was a dull ruddy orange, I think it was an old tomcat with cataracts... I was riveted to the spot with symptoms described above, with great effort I stepped backward then sideways, and (though I knew it was just a cat) found myself running home.
Didn't think about it for years... until I encountered a young girl who loved Fantasia 2000. She'd watch it over and over. But as one particular moment approached she would hide her eyes under a blanket or even jump behind the couch. It was this moment . After the Firebird rose up moments later she'd be fine, sitting down watching intently. I started asking around. At least one other person had a similar reaction to orange eyeshine, and several others when given a choice chose orange as the eye color they'd least like to encounter at night.
This led me into a theory. Imagine paleo-humans around a campfire. The adults exhausted or asleep from the strenuous activities of the day... but the children are alert and awake, keeping watch. They are watching for eyeshine on the fringes of camp. This makes sense because it is the children that predators are watching. Whether or not they were tasked with this duty, or even if it was an "eye game", it may be that we are descended from a successful lineage of children who kept watch at night and successfully sounded the alarm.
Before people huddled around campfires this eyeshine predator fear response could not have been so strongly tuned to orange as it seems to be. Reflected moonlight may give you a faint flash of eyeshine if conditions are right. But when you are between the fire and the eyes it would be really bright, and a predominately orange fire would reflect mainly its own color. Only with the modern electric light would we 'see' those brilliant greens and yellows. So an eyeshine predator fear response would have developed after we tamed fire. As such it might be the most recent base instinct, and because it arises from firelight -- exclusively human.
I have another theory too, it was the domestication of the canine that initially allowed us and our children to sleep through the night, leading into the elaborate REM sleep and dream cycle of modern humans that acts as a wellspring of intelligent creativity.
And it has scarcely been one hundred years since we were paced by animals.
[$2000] you have no idea what you are talking about
Yeah I did pick that out of my backside, could have added a couple of zeroes. But hmm...
If every one of the 700 million currently assigned numbers in North America makes 3 calls an hour on average, that's ~1.5 trillion call records per month. Plus duration and a bit of geolocation data if available, we're only interested in unique number queries (not ranges) so keys are hashable, no strings, write once read forever... this is really a best case database.
Yup, need to add a zero to buy the disk space. $20,000. Add another zero for a cloudlike platform with several years' data that's not down a third of the time for record maintenance.
But nature always finds a way. Teeth become stronger and sharper to pierce the hide directly, armored gullets and crops evolve to subject swallowed prey to slow grinding until the hide is pierced and the juices leak out. Suction arms pin the prey to rock as a horny beak drills through the exoskeleton. Birds lift the prey into the sky and let gravity do the hard work, gathering the yummy bits from the wreckage.
The military should be focusing its research on making soldiers better at hiding, smelling and tasting really bad.