That's pure foolishness. The owners of the power companies do not care where their power derives from socially
Pure foolishness? That's *exactly* like saying corruption does not exist. No sane person would say that. The history of how politics and established wealth affect one another is very long and very well documented, and it certainly is not a rosy picture. If you believe the reasons which drove those occupy movements were based on pure fancy, then you would do well to spend a lot less time inside of your own head and do some reading up on the mountains of available information.
Your recitation of unprovable generalizations and your attempt to steer the discussion toward solar betrays your purpose against power companies: this article was a comparison solely between the costs of wind- and coal-sourced electricity. If you want to stick a solar panel in your back yard, then be my guest.
That smacks of paranoia. I'm not trying to steer the discussion toward anything in particular; you have simply misunderstood my point. Please re-read my previous post with your kneejerks under better control.
When I see wind-driven turbines appearing on the windy parts of my horizon, then I'll believe that wind is cheaper than coal.
This is an over-simple metric to base things on.
The often unspoken component left out of these sorts of calculations is the all-important social aspect.
Who is rich, wants to stay that way, and what is their source of income?
People who own fossil fuel interests are wealthy, the wealthy can/do/regularly buy political choices, and those choices are never going to steer towards a lowering of their money and power.
This is easily among the top three most powerful determining factors when it comes to any important direction society chooses to follow. And yet it is left out of all equations performed by Free Marketeers.
One of the main reasons Solar has managed to get a foothold is that it can be invested in and implemented on and individual by individual basis. Who cares what the spin is, or if Big Energy is willing to stand aside? You can buy your own panels and battery rigs. This is one of those times where the Free Market sort of works; where that unspoken factor, (Elitist Interest in maintaining the status quo), is cut out of the equation.
So long as they aren't accessing working people's bank accounts, I'm surprisingly okay with this and hope they don't get caught. It's not like the banks wouldn't find some other excuse to raise my service charges. Or just plain seize my accounts during times of crisis.
So, go bank robbers!
Though...
Not sure I'd want to risk being destroyed over a bunch of funny money.
Being a bank robber seems like just another flavor of servitude. You're agreeing to value their make-believe money system by risking your 'freedom' for it.
Ever hear of Occam's Razor? The simplest explanation is a natural cross species viral jump, and that is pretty much what probably happened.
I've always thought that Occam's Razor was a sophistic toy for egocentric people of limited knowledge. "Simple" is relative to the observer.
Observers of limited knowledge are going to be limited in what they understand to be likely. (Put bluntly, Stupid Observers make Stupid Observations), --Seriously; which hypothesis requires more leaps of faith:
That scientists created a disease, or that a disease hopped from monkey to human on its own?
For the first one, we have intent, means and opportunity, (as well as admission, material proof and paperwork). But for the second option.., all we have is conjecture.
But if you go by popular myth, with the largest show of hands and the loudest media windbags, then I can see how you might truly think that virus hopping is more likely than something we actually know happens.
Thus, Occam's Razor is utterly useless for actually working things out. I've seen a lot of people use it to fortify some really stupid ideas because they simply don't know enough to conceive anything which might exist outside their limited understanding of the world. Really, Occam's Razor is more an IQ/personality test.
But people do win the lottery. And it's worth noting here that HIV crossed over numerous times some well before the 60s. It's not like it only happened once.
That's an interesting point. Apparently the first confirmed case of HIV-1 was in 1959, and it was from this archival sample they drew their comparative analysis, which is actually right in the operative time frame when virus researchers in the West and the U.S.S.R. were tinkering with simian diseases. The use of the linear particle accelerator for purposeful mutation experiments toward this end began in the fifties.
The race among some of those parties was the creation of deployable bio-weapons, and third world populations would have been seen as the perfect test beds for such endeavors. There are certainly factions within the government which hold a dim view on the value of life, particularly those of us with dark skin. (Heck, even today in our *ahem* enlightened times, a quick look through the postings in this thread are enough to remind us that racism is alive and well).
But it appears that Slashdot's current owners and their "new and improved" moderation system and posting restrictions have either buried or scattered my various comments thus far, rendering meaningful discussion difficult at best, so I'm not sure there's much point in further pursuing this.
I miss the times when venturing open discussion on unpopular subjects here was only subject to verbal abuse.
Cross-species transmission is achieved, as I understand things, when a virus has the opportunity to randomly mutate in such a fashion as allows it to match the receiving features on a host cell in another species. It takes billions of tries.
The flu virus, for instance, is a result of fish/poultry/pig farming systems in Asia where millions of each animal are actively being fed each other's excrement. Thus, there exists a system which in fact offers those billions of tries with the naturally following results we observe today.
A butcher contaminating himself with animal blood as a means of accepting a viable mutation is a much less likely lottery 'win'. -Not to even mention that we've been butchering animals for many thousands of years. It's not at all the new "A-ha!" as some here assume the story rests its case upon, and even despite that, the information linked above doesn't work at odds with this new research. All that article notes is that the conditions in the Kinshasa region were well suited to disease spread, and work was done to map this through the human population. The actual point of species jump is pure conjecture and wasn't the focus of the research itself.
By contrast, the monkey viruses worked on by cancer researcher, Mary Sherman in the 60's, actually involved months of deliberate mutations and culturing of simian disease tissue with a linear particle accelerator provided by the war department in an effort to create effective cancer-causing viruses, and later, to attempt to mitigate problems caused by bad batches of the new polio vaccine.
Coupled with the inadequacies and knowledge blank-spots in virology at the time, it seems unlikely that new diseases were not successfully introduced into the human populace.
But seriously; people attempting to discuss this without first reviewing the information is not doing them any favors.
transmission likely happened through blood while eating the meat. Much more plausible.
As a species, we've been eating meat for a long, long time, and our digestive and immune systems have proven well-adapted to the preventing of cross-species viral contamination through that means.
While I was certainly being flippant with my "sex with chimps" comment, the facts surrounding virology and the development of the polio vaccine provide an altogether more probable, (and indeed, measured) means of disease transmission.
I strongly recommend people overcome their knee-jerk reactions and suspend judgment before exploring the linked information. People have nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain; it's not like I'm selling anything here. Just pointing at some interesting stuff.
Perhaps Kinshasa is the place where the disease got a foothold in the human population, but unless people were having sex with chimps, I would be more inclined to consider a far more compelling origin story.
The modern polio vaccine was grown on simian livers indiscriminate of any other pathogenic bodies which were present. Some of the doctors at the time were abject in their concerns over the limitations and dangers present in those early methods.
Read Dr. Mary's Monkey for the details. -It's a story which includes some notorious figures from the last century, including both the CIA and none other than Lee Harvey Oswald, to name a few. But don't let the "the hell?" factor dissuade you. Truth is nearly always stranger than fiction.
For those unwilling to read a book, (which is going to be nearly everybody given our the nature of our internet-speed attention spans today), here is an interview with the author which covers the bases fairly well:
You have a compromised immune system filled with all kinds of unidentified viral floaties which interrupt cellular intercommunication. Among other things. Don't believe me? There's plenty of solid information out there, but reading is a lot to ask of people. Here's a video lecture which sums some of it up. Seriously; it's not fluff and it's not even talking about the same old arguments you've heard a thousand times before. You will have your mind blown, I can promise you:
So guess who is going to survive ebola: it's not those of us who have been heavily vaccinated. It will be people who have strong immune systems.
How do you get a strong immune system? I know the answer to that, and I can tell you straight up, believing in your government is *not* one of them. Hell, they couldn't even be trusted with something as basic as the food pyramid.
For a bit of rabbit hole fun, go look up the term, "Alternative 3".
A hoax documentary from the 70's in the vein of Orson Wells, except it missed its intended air date, (April Fool's) and aired a couple of months later, flipping people out and leaving its mark on countless 10 year-olds. (How old is Elon Musk?)
The consumer level technology we, the public, get to know about and sometimes even use, is not very impressive. I think sci-fi has accurately predicted a lot of much more interesting advances which we simply aren't advised of.
It's quite reasonable to assume that human tech is a lot further along and less mundane than the cell phone.
Oooh. With the exception of the Internet.
The Internet is truly impressive; epic, even in its scope. The cell phone itself, however, is just a dirty radio with a small screen and a bit of computing power, a window into the thing which is truly amazing.
I strongly suspect the photon capacitor (or something akin to it), was a reality quite some time ago (if you had the right clearance). -And if we consider that some of the weird stuff associated with the Philadelphia Experiment might well have been real back in the 40's, then I'd say sci-fi authors ought to be given more credit for accuracy than they have been.
Why no mention of phasers? Even in the mundane public press, we have seen directed energy weapons mounted to vehicles and used for crowd control. Though, "Microwaving Protesters" sounds less sexy than "Blaster Battle in the Hanger Bay".
Also, laser scalpels are a thing. Heck, laser cutters in general as well as one-off robot assisted tool and die tech. That's all pretty gee-whiz AND practical. Much more so than powered exo-skeletons. I can't imagine much real use for iron man suits unless those previously mentioned photon capacitors are released from deep black.
And transcranial stimulation with EMR is real. Years ago now, there was a company selling medical hardware designed to turn off a subject's eyesight, among other uses. Did sci-fi even think about that one? I guess THX-1138 had elements of that. (I'd be very surprised, in fact, if your cell phone wasn't a node of an on-purpose world-wide population control network that functioned on those same principles. Dumb 'em down with EMR.) -Did you see how those speakers stuttered and farted around for words in that presentation? I bet they'd all have been a little more clear in their communication abilities if they weren't constantly surrounded by their silly wifi devices.
And speaking of those panelists; they struck me as being three plain old normals who were having the same conversation any three semi-intelligent people of limited insight could have around any given kitchen table. -Though, I did appreciate Jen Haeger's being prepared with a few historical notes about who wrote what first.
That cartel lasted all of seven years, and that's despite patent protection, legal threats, and fairly primitive manufacturing and logistics operations. It ended not through government regulation but through market competition
Do you remember the bulb lifetimes back when shopping for incandescents? They didn't change a bit since the days of the cartel despite the technology being entirely available to extend lifetimes far beyond the normalized expectations. That means the cartel dissolved in name only, but all the players carried on with business as usual, collectively enforcing planned obsolescence.
That's hardly a win for the Free Market model. It's an indictment.
The viewer moving through a given scene, (assuming a human) is a complex, large object which absorbs and reflects plenty of light. As you move through an environment you are changing its light dynamics just by existing.
I bet there's a way of faking this effect to some degree, (a low polycount transparent dark/light overlay which changes dynamically). A hybrid polygon/voxel system.
Whatever the case, even without dynamic lighting, this system looks quite impressive and I bet people would enjoy the results for a game. I wouldn't dump on these guys at all, as they are trying to bring new technology into play, which is exciting and should be encouraged.
I dunno, it seems to have worked pretty well for Putin. I mean, wake me up when Obama starts going around assassinating dissenters with polonium and forcing all popular blogs to register with national media censors.
WAKE UP!!!
Unless, you believe when it comes to reporting on Russia, that THEN the administration and media are telling the complete, unspun truth with no hidden agenda designed for personal gain.
I find your knee-jerk reaction really peculiar, but also uniform across a certain subsection of posters.
I've never understood what mechanism it is that drives some people to, apparently, exhibit actual deep-felt hatred for the idea of using technology to exploit a free resource like solar energy.
It has all the earmarks of some kind of cognitive sickness. Very strange.
You appear to not have read my previous response all the way through or to have misconstrued it. Even mentioning that people have observed a measurable difference in the characteristics of airplane contrails from 20 years ago versus what is observed today shuts you down even when I don't even agree with the popular analysis?
You appear to be having an overly strong reaction which is preventing objective thought. You could benefit from asking yourself why that is.
For what it's worth, I have no issue with the moon landing. But I would point out that the tar ball "Fake Moonlanding" stuff was most likely designed in order to be debunked and thus create a state of strong negative knee-jerk reaction in the general population with the objective of shutting people down whenever any ideas are discussed which question the claims stemming from official culture. Fear of being labeled a "Conspiracy Theorist" is a way to control people, to stop them from exploring. -Which in turn bases itself on old school system programming, where we were all made to fear connecting with our peers, to fear being laughed at and ostracized.
Being laughed at is not something to fear after you realize that those who laugh are generally traumatized and more afraid than their targets. I feel sympathy these days. I know where you're coming from.
It is less "conspiracy theory" than it is objective analysis as it all comes from verified facts on the ground, and lengthy observation of the behavior over time of the agencies involved, combined with straight-forward thinking. Its one issue is that it happens not to agree with the propaganda, which is *far* more off the rails when one compares the claims to the things we actually see and know.
But of course, no single source has it all, nor should be looked to for All Truth. Chemtrails are certainly a real, relatively new observation, but the popular conclusions are misled, I think. I suspect they have more to do with climate change. Colder air in the upper atmosphere is a lot lower down than it has been, hence new condensation characteristics.
But that's neither here nor there.
This analysis happened to stand well. No news source is ever 100% without smudge. Heck, I can't think of many sources which do better than around (a subjective) 65% when you start going through their history. If we discount an entire source when they go astray on unrelated items, we'd end up reading nothing at all.
You shouldn't get all your news from one source, especially when it's a crackpot site like that one.
I don't. And while it's easy for people like you to call names unjustly, I'd point out that crackpot is as crackpot does. I don't see much crackpot there. I see well-linked deep thinking and conscientious, smart analysis.
In fact, I'd call the mainstream media WAY more 'crackpot' than small publishers with nothing to gain from lying or just passing on government press releases without any effort to substantiate those claims. That's modern journalism, and that's, frankly, nuts given what we know.
Anybody who does the work necessary to sift through this stuff and to look at the larger patterns in play, at the dense history of government lies and the catastrophic results following, generally comes to the same conclusion.
The attacks were not carried out with the coordination and cooperation of the Syrian government. Nor were they carried out with Syrian government permission.
On the legality of this war. (No vote really needed):
The Obama administration reiterated that it was neither asking for permission nor for a new authorization to use military force. The White House asserts that it has all the authority it needs to achieve its goals under the authorizations to use military force that were approved after the 9/11 attacks and in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
U.S. funded the people they're bombing:
after a decision made by the White House and approved by Congress on September 17, 2014, to arm and train the alleged "moderate" Syrian rebels. The vote was 273-156 in favor of the $500 million plan. Of course, the bill in question was actually an amendment that was cynically attached to a bill designed to continue funding for the federal government in the short-term, ensuring maximum support from members of the House.
Sorry? They're funding who? There are no moderate Syrian rebels.
[...]there were never, nor are there any "moderates" operating in Syria. The West has intentionally armed and funded Al Qaeda and other sectarian extremists since as early as 2007 in preparation for an engineered sectarian bloodbath serving US-Saudi-Israeli interests. This latest bid to portray the terrorists operating along and within Syria's borders as "divided" along extremists/moderate lines is a ploy to justify the continued flow of Western cash and arms into Syria to perpetuate the conflict, as well as create conditions along Syria's borders with which Western partners, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, can justify direct military intervention.
ISIS Is Controlled By The U.S. And NATO:
It is important to point out that the Islamic State is not some shadowy force that emerged from the caves of Afghanistan to form an effective military force that is funded by Twitter donations and murky secretive finance deals. IS is entirely the creation of NATO and the West and it remains in control of the organization.
And WHO exactly trained these ISIS guys anyway?
Keep in mind also that, prior to the rapid appearance and seizure of territory by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, European media outlets like Der Spiegel reported that hundreds of fighters were being trained in Jordan by Western intelligence and military personnel for the purpose of deployment in Syria to fight against Assad.
Shit. Did we also arm them..?
Western media outlets have also gone to great lengths to spin the fact that ISIS is operating in both Syria and Iraq with an alarming number of American weapons and equipment. As Business Insider stated, "The report [study by the London-based small arms research organization Conflict Armament Research] said the jihadists disposed of 'significant quantities' of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings 'Property of US Govt.'" The article also acknowledged that a large number of the weapons used by ISIS were provided by Saudi Arabia, a close American ally.
What the hell is really going on over there?
ISIS Attack On Taqba Airbase - The Precursor To A NATO Attack On Syria:
Keeping in mind that ISIS is controlled and directed by NATO and Western intelligence, the fact that the death s
How long have you been reading here? Have you noticed NO trends in how propaganda works? How many of you were crying "rah rah" when the U.S. rolled into Iraq based on exactly this kind of propaganda?
A damned lot of you, that's how many.
But live and learn, right? Emphasis on LEARN
From the article:
The purpose of the possible measure is not to isolate Russia from the outside world, but to protect the country, should the USA, for example, decide to disconnect Russia from the system of IP-addresses. It will be possible to avoid this threat, if Russia has a local regulator to distribute IP-addresses inside the country, rather than the ICANN, controlled by the United States government. This requires operators to set up "mirrors" that will be able to receive user requests and forward them to specific domain names.
You idiots. The world is doomed because too few of you have learned how to think.
When businesses use tactical planning to ensure their industry pie slice, why is it bad when We the People do it?
You've been fed an old and oft-repeated line from corporate interests using their own tactic: trick people into supporting them with spurious appeals and through this, Win The Market.
And for your information, Hollywood North is awesome, and I enjoy the content they produce. So do you, I'd wager. "A stronger industry", usually means that people give up any say or control and throw the dice on the deregulated crapshoot where you have a good chance of ending up with rolling blackouts because of psychopathic management and no way to fix it yourself. You're stuck hoping that the so-called, "Free Market" will somehow repair things despite its having done a lousy job so far.
The Free Market, if left to its own devices, has no motivation to actually provide decent services at reasonable prices if it can rig the table to funnel cash with no expenditure. Regulation allows people to stop table rigging.
Wow. You said "highfalutin" and meant it. Also, entropy is a false idea.
Which probably means:
c) I, the speaker, have an agile mind capable of lateral thinking, terrifying the one-size-fits-all left overs from the previous evolutionary cycle.
Ever notice that? Lateral thinkers are capable of recognizing that there are multiple learning styles, while fixed thinkers tend to get defensive and say, "NO! THERE IS ONLY MY WAY!"
Beside the point.
I believe Information Wants to be Free, but I also think its a good idea to pay for stuff. Oooooh. How does the fixed thinker deal with such a contradiction..?
He doesn't. He gets left behind with his crusty, worn out old notions, (like 'entropy' and 'big-bangs'). No wonder they feel so threatened and resentful. Maybe entropy does exist. But just for them. Damn. I'd feel resentful also, if I were unable to keep up.
Plenty of brain studies illustrate the multifold benefits of crunching through text over chasing pixels. I don't know what sort of metric one might use, (Ideas per square inch? Number/Diversity of thoughts per minute?), but people who read regularly can observably think, speak and write more capably than those who do not.
Sure, books can certainly contain just as much propaganda as any other medium, but those other mediums visited excessively result in lazy, addicted brains. I've never met an anti-book, dedicated video gamer who didn't suffer from the apparent umbrella of effects loosely described as 'brain fog'. (Another soft metric, but one which is pretty damned obvious to the observer.)
First, it is information, and does not want anything. It cannot want anything.
I don't know about that...
Information Theory offers us some revolutionary ideas.
In a very real sense, you ARE the product of Information which has reached a critical threshold resulting in self-awareness.
What do *you* want?
Information certainly seems to have a propensity for self-propagation. DNA is an example of an information-rich molecule arrangement which contains more data than the simple sum of its parts, and which is really, really good at persisting and propagating.
And as people do indeed act as you describe, "their first instinct is to share it", then this might tell us something about what information wants.
Slashdot Mirror
Pure foolishness? That's *exactly* like saying corruption does not exist. No sane person would say that. The history of how politics and established wealth affect one another is very long and very well documented, and it certainly is not a rosy picture. If you believe the reasons which drove those occupy movements were based on pure fancy, then you would do well to spend a lot less time inside of your own head and do some reading up on the mountains of available information.
That smacks of paranoia. I'm not trying to steer the discussion toward anything in particular; you have simply misunderstood my point. Please re-read my previous post with your kneejerks under better control.
This is an over-simple metric to base things on.
The often unspoken component left out of these sorts of calculations is the all-important social aspect.
Who is rich, wants to stay that way, and what is their source of income?
People who own fossil fuel interests are wealthy, the wealthy can/do/regularly buy political choices, and those choices are never going to steer towards a lowering of their money and power.
This is easily among the top three most powerful determining factors when it comes to any important direction society chooses to follow. And yet it is left out of all equations performed by Free Marketeers.
One of the main reasons Solar has managed to get a foothold is that it can be invested in and implemented on and individual by individual basis. Who cares what the spin is, or if Big Energy is willing to stand aside? You can buy your own panels and battery rigs. This is one of those times where the Free Market sort of works; where that unspoken factor, (Elitist Interest in maintaining the status quo), is cut out of the equation.
So long as they aren't accessing working people's bank accounts, I'm surprisingly okay with this and hope they don't get caught. It's not like the banks wouldn't find some other excuse to raise my service charges. Or just plain seize my accounts during times of crisis.
So, go bank robbers!
Though...
Not sure I'd want to risk being destroyed over a bunch of funny money.
Being a bank robber seems like just another flavor of servitude. You're agreeing to value their make-believe money system by risking your 'freedom' for it.
I've always thought that Occam's Razor was a sophistic toy for egocentric people of limited knowledge. "Simple" is relative to the observer.
Observers of limited knowledge are going to be limited in what they understand to be likely. (Put bluntly, Stupid Observers make Stupid Observations), --Seriously; which hypothesis requires more leaps of faith:
That scientists created a disease, or that a disease hopped from monkey to human on its own?
For the first one, we have intent, means and opportunity, (as well as admission, material proof and paperwork). But for the second option.., all we have is conjecture.
But if you go by popular myth, with the largest show of hands and the loudest media windbags, then I can see how you might truly think that virus hopping is more likely than something we actually know happens.
Thus, Occam's Razor is utterly useless for actually working things out. I've seen a lot of people use it to fortify some really stupid ideas because they simply don't know enough to conceive anything which might exist outside their limited understanding of the world. Really, Occam's Razor is more an IQ/personality test.
That's an interesting point. Apparently the first confirmed case of HIV-1 was in 1959, and it was from this archival sample they drew their comparative analysis, which is actually right in the operative time frame when virus researchers in the West and the U.S.S.R. were tinkering with simian diseases. The use of the linear particle accelerator for purposeful mutation experiments toward this end began in the fifties.
The race among some of those parties was the creation of deployable bio-weapons, and third world populations would have been seen as the perfect test beds for such endeavors. There are certainly factions within the government which hold a dim view on the value of life, particularly those of us with dark skin. (Heck, even today in our *ahem* enlightened times, a quick look through the postings in this thread are enough to remind us that racism is alive and well).
But it appears that Slashdot's current owners and their "new and improved" moderation system and posting restrictions have either buried or scattered my various comments thus far, rendering meaningful discussion difficult at best, so I'm not sure there's much point in further pursuing this.
I miss the times when venturing open discussion on unpopular subjects here was only subject to verbal abuse.
sigh. The good ol' days. :)
Cross-species transmission is achieved, as I understand things, when a virus has the opportunity to randomly mutate in such a fashion as allows it to match the receiving features on a host cell in another species. It takes billions of tries.
The flu virus, for instance, is a result of fish/poultry/pig farming systems in Asia where millions of each animal are actively being fed each other's excrement. Thus, there exists a system which in fact offers those billions of tries with the naturally following results we observe today.
A butcher contaminating himself with animal blood as a means of accepting a viable mutation is a much less likely lottery 'win'. -Not to even mention that we've been butchering animals for many thousands of years. It's not at all the new "A-ha!" as some here assume the story rests its case upon, and even despite that, the information linked above doesn't work at odds with this new research. All that article notes is that the conditions in the Kinshasa region were well suited to disease spread, and work was done to map this through the human population. The actual point of species jump is pure conjecture and wasn't the focus of the research itself.
By contrast, the monkey viruses worked on by cancer researcher, Mary Sherman in the 60's, actually involved months of deliberate mutations and culturing of simian disease tissue with a linear particle accelerator provided by the war department in an effort to create effective cancer-causing viruses, and later, to attempt to mitigate problems caused by bad batches of the new polio vaccine.
Coupled with the inadequacies and knowledge blank-spots in virology at the time, it seems unlikely that new diseases were not successfully introduced into the human populace.
But seriously; people attempting to discuss this without first reviewing the information is not doing them any favors.
As a species, we've been eating meat for a long, long time, and our digestive and immune systems have proven well-adapted to the preventing of cross-species viral contamination through that means.
While I was certainly being flippant with my "sex with chimps" comment, the facts surrounding virology and the development of the polio vaccine provide an altogether more probable, (and indeed, measured) means of disease transmission.
I strongly recommend people overcome their knee-jerk reactions and suspend judgment before exploring the linked information. People have nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain; it's not like I'm selling anything here. Just pointing at some interesting stuff.
But do as you will.
Perhaps Kinshasa is the place where the disease got a foothold in the human population, but unless people were having sex with chimps, I would be more inclined to consider a far more compelling origin story.
The modern polio vaccine was grown on simian livers indiscriminate of any other pathogenic bodies which were present. Some of the doctors at the time were abject in their concerns over the limitations and dangers present in those early methods.
Read Dr. Mary's Monkey for the details. -It's a story which includes some notorious figures from the last century, including both the CIA and none other than Lee Harvey Oswald, to name a few. But don't let the "the hell?" factor dissuade you. Truth is nearly always stranger than fiction.
For those unwilling to read a book, (which is going to be nearly everybody given our the nature of our internet-speed attention spans today), here is an interview with the author which covers the bases fairly well:
Interview with Edward T. Haslam
They already do. It's called, "Vaccination".
You have a compromised immune system filled with all kinds of unidentified viral floaties which interrupt cellular intercommunication. Among other things. Don't believe me? There's plenty of solid information out there, but reading is a lot to ask of people. Here's a video lecture which sums some of it up. Seriously; it's not fluff and it's not even talking about the same old arguments you've heard a thousand times before. You will have your mind blown, I can promise you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8FCJ_VPyns
So guess who is going to survive ebola: it's not those of us who have been heavily vaccinated. It will be people who have strong immune systems.
How do you get a strong immune system? I know the answer to that, and I can tell you straight up, believing in your government is *not* one of them. Hell, they couldn't even be trusted with something as basic as the food pyramid.
For a bit of rabbit hole fun, go look up the term, "Alternative 3".
A hoax documentary from the 70's in the vein of Orson Wells, except it missed its intended air date, (April Fool's) and aired a couple of months later, flipping people out and leaving its mark on countless 10 year-olds. (How old is Elon Musk?)
Heck, I'll pull it up for you. Super fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I can't decide if the extent of your reality disconnect is comical or tragic.
This is exactly why we have periodic plagues.
The consumer level technology we, the public, get to know about and sometimes even use, is not very impressive. I think sci-fi has accurately predicted a lot of much more interesting advances which we simply aren't advised of.
It's quite reasonable to assume that human tech is a lot further along and less mundane than the cell phone.
Oooh. With the exception of the Internet.
The Internet is truly impressive; epic, even in its scope. The cell phone itself, however, is just a dirty radio with a small screen and a bit of computing power, a window into the thing which is truly amazing.
I strongly suspect the photon capacitor (or something akin to it), was a reality quite some time ago (if you had the right clearance). -And if we consider that some of the weird stuff associated with the Philadelphia Experiment might well have been real back in the 40's, then I'd say sci-fi authors ought to be given more credit for accuracy than they have been.
Why no mention of phasers? Even in the mundane public press, we have seen directed energy weapons mounted to vehicles and used for crowd control. Though, "Microwaving Protesters" sounds less sexy than "Blaster Battle in the Hanger Bay".
Also, laser scalpels are a thing. Heck, laser cutters in general as well as one-off robot assisted tool and die tech. That's all pretty gee-whiz AND practical. Much more so than powered exo-skeletons. I can't imagine much real use for iron man suits unless those previously mentioned photon capacitors are released from deep black.
And transcranial stimulation with EMR is real. Years ago now, there was a company selling medical hardware designed to turn off a subject's eyesight, among other uses. Did sci-fi even think about that one? I guess THX-1138 had elements of that. (I'd be very surprised, in fact, if your cell phone wasn't a node of an on-purpose world-wide population control network that functioned on those same principles. Dumb 'em down with EMR.) -Did you see how those speakers stuttered and farted around for words in that presentation? I bet they'd all have been a little more clear in their communication abilities if they weren't constantly surrounded by their silly wifi devices.
And speaking of those panelists; they struck me as being three plain old normals who were having the same conversation any three semi-intelligent people of limited insight could have around any given kitchen table. -Though, I did appreciate Jen Haeger's being prepared with a few historical notes about who wrote what first.
Do you remember the bulb lifetimes back when shopping for incandescents? They didn't change a bit since the days of the cartel despite the technology being entirely available to extend lifetimes far beyond the normalized expectations. That means the cartel dissolved in name only, but all the players carried on with business as usual, collectively enforcing planned obsolescence.
That's hardly a win for the Free Market model. It's an indictment.
Agreed.
The viewer moving through a given scene, (assuming a human) is a complex, large object which absorbs and reflects plenty of light. As you move through an environment you are changing its light dynamics just by existing.
I bet there's a way of faking this effect to some degree, (a low polycount transparent dark/light overlay which changes dynamically). A hybrid polygon/voxel system.
Whatever the case, even without dynamic lighting, this system looks quite impressive and I bet people would enjoy the results for a game. I wouldn't dump on these guys at all, as they are trying to bring new technology into play, which is exciting and should be encouraged.
WAKE UP!!!
Unless, you believe when it comes to reporting on Russia, that THEN the administration and media are telling the complete, unspun truth with no hidden agenda designed for personal gain.
As it happens, Russia is crafting whistleblower protections right now: http://rt.com/politics/190264-...
I read your post.
I find your knee-jerk reaction really peculiar, but also uniform across a certain subsection of posters.
I've never understood what mechanism it is that drives some people to, apparently, exhibit actual deep-felt hatred for the idea of using technology to exploit a free resource like solar energy.
It has all the earmarks of some kind of cognitive sickness. Very strange.
You appear to not have read my previous response all the way through or to have misconstrued it. Even mentioning that people have observed a measurable difference in the characteristics of airplane contrails from 20 years ago versus what is observed today shuts you down even when I don't even agree with the popular analysis?
You appear to be having an overly strong reaction which is preventing objective thought. You could benefit from asking yourself why that is.
For what it's worth, I have no issue with the moon landing. But I would point out that the tar ball "Fake Moonlanding" stuff was most likely designed in order to be debunked and thus create a state of strong negative knee-jerk reaction in the general population with the objective of shutting people down whenever any ideas are discussed which question the claims stemming from official culture. Fear of being labeled a "Conspiracy Theorist" is a way to control people, to stop them from exploring. -Which in turn bases itself on old school system programming, where we were all made to fear connecting with our peers, to fear being laughed at and ostracized.
Being laughed at is not something to fear after you realize that those who laugh are generally traumatized and more afraid than their targets. I feel sympathy these days. I know where you're coming from.
I disagree.
It is less "conspiracy theory" than it is objective analysis as it all comes from verified facts on the ground, and lengthy observation of the behavior over time of the agencies involved, combined with straight-forward thinking. Its one issue is that it happens not to agree with the propaganda, which is *far* more off the rails when one compares the claims to the things we actually see and know.
But of course, no single source has it all, nor should be looked to for All Truth. Chemtrails are certainly a real, relatively new observation, but the popular conclusions are misled, I think. I suspect they have more to do with climate change. Colder air in the upper atmosphere is a lot lower down than it has been, hence new condensation characteristics.
But that's neither here nor there.
This analysis happened to stand well. No news source is ever 100% without smudge. Heck, I can't think of many sources which do better than around (a subjective) 65% when you start going through their history. If we discount an entire source when they go astray on unrelated items, we'd end up reading nothing at all.
I don't. And while it's easy for people like you to call names unjustly, I'd point out that crackpot is as crackpot does. I don't see much crackpot there. I see well-linked deep thinking and conscientious, smart analysis.
In fact, I'd call the mainstream media WAY more 'crackpot' than small publishers with nothing to gain from lying or just passing on government press releases without any effort to substantiate those claims. That's modern journalism, and that's, frankly, nuts given what we know.
Anybody who does the work necessary to sift through this stuff and to look at the larger patterns in play, at the dense history of government lies and the catastrophic results following, generally comes to the same conclusion.
No permission:
On the legality of this war. (No vote really needed):
U.S. funded the people they're bombing:
Sorry? They're funding who? There are no moderate Syrian rebels.
ISIS Is Controlled By The U.S. And NATO:
And WHO exactly trained these ISIS guys anyway?
Shit. Did we also arm them..?
What the hell is really going on over there?
How long have you been reading here? Have you noticed NO trends in how propaganda works? How many of you were crying "rah rah" when the U.S. rolled into Iraq based on exactly this kind of propaganda?
A damned lot of you, that's how many.
But live and learn, right? Emphasis on LEARN
From the article:
You idiots. The world is doomed because too few of you have learned how to think.
Bullshit.
When businesses use tactical planning to ensure their industry pie slice, why is it bad when We the People do it?
You've been fed an old and oft-repeated line from corporate interests using their own tactic: trick people into supporting them with spurious appeals and through this, Win The Market.
And for your information, Hollywood North is awesome, and I enjoy the content they produce. So do you, I'd wager. "A stronger industry", usually means that people give up any say or control and throw the dice on the deregulated crapshoot where you have a good chance of ending up with rolling blackouts because of psychopathic management and no way to fix it yourself. You're stuck hoping that the so-called, "Free Market" will somehow repair things despite its having done a lousy job so far.
The Free Market, if left to its own devices, has no motivation to actually provide decent services at reasonable prices if it can rig the table to funnel cash with no expenditure. Regulation allows people to stop table rigging.
Why is that so hard to grasp?
Wow. You said "highfalutin" and meant it. Also, entropy is a false idea.
Which probably means:
c) I, the speaker, have an agile mind capable of lateral thinking, terrifying the one-size-fits-all left overs from the previous evolutionary cycle.
Ever notice that? Lateral thinkers are capable of recognizing that there are multiple learning styles, while fixed thinkers tend to get defensive and say, "NO! THERE IS ONLY MY WAY!"
Beside the point.
I believe Information Wants to be Free, but I also think its a good idea to pay for stuff. Oooooh. How does the fixed thinker deal with such a contradiction..?
He doesn't. He gets left behind with his crusty, worn out old notions, (like 'entropy' and 'big-bangs'). No wonder they feel so threatened and resentful. Maybe entropy does exist. But just for them. Damn. I'd feel resentful also, if I were unable to keep up.
I respectfully disagree.
Plenty of brain studies illustrate the multifold benefits of crunching through text over chasing pixels. I don't know what sort of metric one might use, (Ideas per square inch? Number/Diversity of thoughts per minute?), but people who read regularly can observably think, speak and write more capably than those who do not.
Sure, books can certainly contain just as much propaganda as any other medium, but those other mediums visited excessively result in lazy, addicted brains. I've never met an anti-book, dedicated video gamer who didn't suffer from the apparent umbrella of effects loosely described as 'brain fog'. (Another soft metric, but one which is pretty damned obvious to the observer.)
I don't know about that...
Information Theory offers us some revolutionary ideas.
In a very real sense, you ARE the product of Information which has reached a critical threshold resulting in self-awareness.
What do *you* want?
Information certainly seems to have a propensity for self-propagation. DNA is an example of an information-rich molecule arrangement which contains more data than the simple sum of its parts, and which is really, really good at persisting and propagating.
And as people do indeed act as you describe, "their first instinct is to share it", then this might tell us something about what information wants.
Just some thoughts.