Germany and other European nations are quickly eliminating fossil fuels and nuclear. In the US we are behind in applying solar, wind and water energy both in a collective and individual way. But the handwriting is on the wall. Big energy will do every corrupt trick in the book to keep sucking at your wallet. As homes and businesses go off grid we will see much higher rates for homes still on the grid. This is Future Shock. It is rather like Uber threatening to eliminate the taxi industry. It is quite like Tesla threatening to cripple gasoline and diesel producers and the cars and trucks that use gas and diesel. And it is like robots replacing fast food workers. It is all happening at a very high speed and some social chaos will follow.
The people who ordered this deserve to be tried for war crimes. Some individuals were actually tortured to death. Baby Bush would be first in line for a hanging. It makes me sick that the lowest level guards who were following orders were the ones who were drummed out of the service etc.. And the public should know that we caused other nations to apply even worse tortures within the same prisons.
I would rather be loyal to humanity than loyal to any nation.
It makes sense to me as two objects attracted to each other close the gap between them over time. The action of gravity supports the notion of time. It could easily be causal to the existance of time as well. Imagine two objects attracting in a system in which time did not exist. The joining of the two objects would be instantanious and violent.
Is it me or is a quadrillion watt laser just something that I can not really grasp? That sounds like a whole bunch of energy applied over a very short period of time. It is sort of like trying to imagine how many grains of sand exist in the world. After the first billion or so the numbers don't mean much to me.
Profiteering is a gentle term for a disease that plagues America. The right wing does not feel that capitalism has anything to do with economics. They view capitalism as a religion. To them raking is huge sums for the least effort is the meaning of life. Materialism is a natural fruit of capitalism. This is what happens when you restrict the faith community in the schools. We have all heard of the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. It should be called the gold calf. It represented and abandonment of God and a worship of wealth. Today we see people worshipping money in every way. Worse yet governmental forces enforce this greed by requiring people to have money. One way or another the govrnment will insist that you agree to have money. If you want to wander about with a tent and not sign up as a member of modern nonsense the land will be called either private or public and your little tent will not be allowed. As my Haitian friend remarked those corporate types belong to Satan. She is sort of right.
One major purpose of car dealerships is to confuse buyers concerning the cost of driving a mile. For example offering a $4,000 cut in price for any trade in that can be dragged in on a garden hose gives the buyer and illusion that the cost per mile of operation is reasonable.
If one takes the cost of the vehicle, the interest on the loan, the compulory mainetence fees, the optional maintenance fees, the insurance, repairs, and gasoline over the life of tye car then one can get the cost per mile driven. For example you buy a $30,000 car and the instant depreciation is $10,000 and you only drive 10,000 miles that year the depreciation alone is $1.00 per mile. You first year per mile expenses when totaled may exceed $2.00 per mile. If people calculate the true cost per mile they may suddenly be confronted with the reality that they should not own a car. Dealerships use all kinds of gimmicks to cause people not to understand the cost of driving.
Frankly both the invasive carp as well as the snake head fish are something that interest fishermen and others. Opinions may vary but I'd bet money that a few people will quite deliberately sneak both species into the great lakes. Obviously when this occurs other species may not be able to do well at all but the fishermen will be able to easely catch carp and snake heads. Although the carp would be better raised in fish farms they could be considered a resource as they taste ok. We have had snale heads in south Florida since 1980 and maybe even before that. I've caught quite a few but never cooked one. They are simply a larger version of the American bowfin which have always existed in Florida.
There are many places more wonderful to live than Ohio.
In Florida when the job market is tight even a minor misdemeanor can jamb you up for life as far as almost all companies are concerned and it doesn't matter what skill or trade you are in. But you can be elected to Congress and fit right in.
To be free of being a target of crime is also a reasonable human expectation or right. To live in a society that has a reasonable degree of order and regular function might also be described as a human right. To expect the full benefit of medical technology, food and housing as well as legal representation in both civil and criminal issues is also esential. Not to be lied to by our employees that we call "the government" is also vital.
How is it that most of these areas only get lip service and any progress is astoundingly slow? Is it reasonable for veterans not to get benefits the moment they are discharged from duty? How can a man be held in a jail for four years awaiting trial? How is it that arrests that lead to not guilty verdicts do not compel government to compensate the person subjected to that false arrest?
Progress is upon us and the social upheaval may stop it all. Just as workers are becomming obsolete in large numbers so will major businesses. Businesses lack a basic sense of co-operation and instead believe in ugly forms of competition. For example GM or Chrysler could have gone to Tesla and taken a lisence to build a set number of vehicles using Tesla's electrical and mechanical designs while offering a differnet body style or accessories. But instead they try every trick in the world to bury Tesla in the dirt. Now watch the electric utilities try to use influence to stop self generation of power for homes. The oil industry is in a panic and I suspect that the tumble in gasoline prices is a futile effort to try to hold onto the market. As 3D printing becomes more advanced factories all over the world will close. Methods of supporting the public must be a prime concern as we are going to see violent social unrest as people feel more and more economic pressure.
Simply dedicate time each day to memorizing anything. For example memorize Hamlet. You may not give a hoot about Hamlet but it gets you accustomed to focusing on a narrow subject for fairly long periods of time. When done with Hamlet pick a novel and try to memorize and maintain all of the novel. Education is focused on exactly that type of thing. It applies even to mathematics. I knew a school girl who committed the entire log tables to memory from one to one thousand in order to be able to conserve time on the SAT exams.
I'm not certain any intelligent life exists on Earth. Compared to what an advanced being might be able to perceive and work with we might be so close to being as dumb as a common earth worm that the difference in intelligence is meaningless. For example give a worm an IQ of 1 and a human an IQ of 2 and an advanced being an IQ of 30,000. As far as i know there has been no prediction of just how advanced a really advanced species might get. It is also obvious that computers may already be far more advanced in certain ways than humans can hope to be and new areas for computer power seem to be opening rather quickly. Much depends on how one sees intelligence. If long life is any indicator turtles would be considered more intelligent than humans and unlike human turtles do not destroy nature or organize wars. Mankind thinks too highly of itself.
As far as i know it was 1961 when the city of Ft. Lauderdale got the first police tank. It was in fear of the dreaded college students on Ft. Lauderdale beach on spring break. It was stored underneath the local public swimming pool. It featured such things as tear gas sprays and rubber bullets. But the heavy, tracked vehicle was a threat as our beach road was normally covered with students. We had as many as 500,000 at one time. About 1962 colleges started to stagger their spring breaks to avoid crowding at resort areas and the FT. Lauderdale police and officials were ugly enough to cause less kids to come to Ft. Lauderdale anyway. And yes, kids really were assaulted for no reason by over worked cops. I was there and saw it first hand. Oh Lord save us from the hordes of scholars descending upon us.
Sadly most young girls are obsessed with clothing and cosmetic products. And frankly there is nothing more likely to ruin a girl than going down that path. Look at the term model closely. Would you rather own a model car or a real car? Girls are socialized to be observable. Their culture involves how they look and not what they are.
The Kahn Academy might be a great place to park your young girls to complete mini courses.
In order for people in a nation to support a market place two things are required. The people must have disposable income and leisure time available.
Sadly we are living in a time in the US where most people have less and less disposable income and either have way too much liesure time or way too little liesure time. We can assume the unemployed won't be getting "things" very much at all. And those that work anywhere near minimum wage won't be buying much either. And it is not a tax problem as politicians would have you believe. It is the cost of basic survival is too high and the wealth the rich have been allowed to accumulate has ruined the economy. Yes we do need a fair minimum wage and we also need a maximum wage and earnings limit as well. Failure to do this will result in some sort of revolution which may already be under way. Every crime has an element of rebellion against government in it and every arrest costs the tax payer more money. The downward path is chiseled in rock for all to see.
There will be a stunning legal effect if cash is not the method of exchange. The rich will continue to be able to lead criminal lives with very little chance of being caught. But low level criminals will be swept up like never before. The thief with cash from stolen bicycles will not be able to spend his money as he can not verify his money intake. Even for organized crime it will create big problems as the lesser players that the mob depends upon will not be able to explain their income. Even the store owner who pays a bit of protection will become historic as with electronic money the books will never add up. In essence if the exact crime can not be proven the IRS would have people by the short hairs every time.
Even the migrant farm workers as well as their employers could be swept up with great ease as electronic money will be unavoidable. Yet there are places such as New jersey where crime may be essential in the lives of most people as the state is known to be so corrupt that organized crime is actually a moderater for governmental and business corruption.
This man is a victem of the politically moderated speech problem. He stated his beliefs and was then considered anti-female and anti black. In reference to black, native people I do not find it outlandish to suppose that there is little demand for esoteric reasoning as they are busy enough trying to eek out a living. I further do not think it is offensive to state that peoples' minds and social customs adapt to what is needful to survive. Therefore I would expect it to be very rare for native people, not exposed heavily to western life, may not have activated abilities in the mind that are more common in urban cultures. That is not looking down on anyone. People simply adapt their minds to their needs.
As far as the remarks about female scientists in the workplace he is on target. The men probably enjoyed the company and therefore the men may not be as concentrated on their work. It does not attack the ability of women at all. It points to the difficulty in mixing sexes in some jobs.
The notion of non-offensive speech is killing free speech.
The denser the population the more laws, rules and regulations get passed and the worse they get enforced. There is a certain reality that we are all hurdling through space on a rock and we are all doomed as well as the entire human race. As population swells and personal morality drops people become frightened and unable to cope with life. Politicians tossing out reams of laws as pablum to the people in order to get or keep a voting base is simply a form of corruption in itself. People do need to have a spine. To be able to stand and take the arrows and slings of fate while being aware that you are in a losing battle is just part of life. These days we have so many cowards who hide with alcohol or drugs and make all kinds of false justifications for their cowardice that I do not know how we expect to survive as a nation.
So some Casper Milk Toast wets his pants over lyrics that many other people find funny. It seems to me Casper is the one to be punished for being such an over sensitive freak, A minister that complains that a person will burn in eternal hell if they are not a baptized and repentant Christian could be considered as menacing and threatening. These restraints on speech need to stop. A rap singer is says I'm going to eat your baby does it for comic effect. And I suppose that some listeners to rap music salivate over a day in which cops will be gunned down. But most sane people very much realize that the notion of fighting a well trained police force is foolish. And the notion that citizens with hand guns and rifles can put down the military is just plain stupid. There is no city anywhere that the military can not crush with ease. It is only because one goal is to avoid killing innocents that clearing a city of combatants is difficult at all.
Football is modeled after warfare. The idea of charging the line in violent confrontation and almost assuring great injury or death was a common thing to do in the Civil War, WW1 and several lesser wars. At the time people didn't normally live very long and few were feeling good at the age of 40. We have classic players in major plays who called them selves old and senile at 35. So the idea of being snapped in half on a football field seemed quite acceptable and players were told that it was their responsibility to be trained and able to handle the conflict of the game. It is like telling them if they die in the game they just did not try hard enough. In 1860 a 10 year old boy might be treated as an adult. These days some parents consider their offspring to be kids until they are in their 40s. But after they mess up football what about boxing, motorcycle racing and sports that rip people limb from limb? In motorcycle racing there have been incidents in which the brain was bashed completely out of the head. The famous Mike Hailwood actually stopped to attend a dying rider in the middle of a race and other riders were actually driving over the brains on the track. Then again Mike the Bike and his son died in a car going out for fish and chips.
Drunken drivers already cost us a fortune in enforcement, jailing etc.. Now we have another very expensive issue with pot and driving while high. Worse yet the strength of each dose of pot will vary wildly so the user can be much higher than he intended to be or less high than he intended to be. And being that people who have just smoked pot are not able to tell at all how high they are they will tend to drive when many times they should not. Since we already lock up more citizens than any nation on the planet can the tax payer really afford this problem?
And just to make it even a darker issue our jails and prisons usually make a person worse than when they offended and the worse the jail or prison the more likely inmates are to turn to a life of crime. We need teams of ministers to be in the jails and being there at all hours to stop what amounts to torture of inmates. Such policies as making it very, very difficult to get any reading material at all, charging huge fees for phone calls which breaks up families, failure to deliver quick medical care in emergencies and deliberate abuse by prison staff need to be halted dead in their tracks. The idea is to release a better inmate and not fill inmates with rage that will effect their behavior when released.
Traditional powers always want to hold the turf. The FAA wants to keep its authority. But this will distill into a solution that the FAA may not like. Drones are proving to be very useful and are rapidly becomming more and more useful. If the skies can not tolerate both drones and traditional aircraft it may well be time to ground planes almost completely as drones have more to offer most people. Keep in mind that passenger carrying drones can easily exist. The Air Force is more than slightly aware that human pilots are not ideal in fighter type air craft. Even the notion of a human controller in a remore location is not such a great idea as autonomous drones are rapidly becomming more and more capable and less likely to err than human controllers.
In some ways weapons of war with very high tech designs begin to resemble ancient ideas of war machines. For example artillary barges which either had no ability to guide themselves or very small propellers and engines to be able to do a bit of manuvering can be seen in modern designs. A large vessel tows an unmanned barge that sits so low to the water that water sloshes on its deck. The sides are V shaped to ward off strikes by guns or torpedoes. The barge is able to go the last two or three hundred miles under its own engine. It is a highly armed device with missile ports and other high tech weapons that pop up and can rain hell on a region. It is all weapon and all armour. No sailors are at risk at all. When the barge depletes its weapons it can return to the mother ship or pull into the mouth of a harbor and scuttle itself thuse sealing off the harbor.
The net and computers are simply tools. In fact they are very powerful and world changing tools. And the funny thing is that good things almost always take a life here and there. How many people have perished from a table saw accident? And even as something as innocent as a play or a sonnet will tend to leave a body count. I'd bet money that arguments by Shakespeare experts have led to violence now and then over the meaning of a phrase in some work of Shakespeare. And the Bible and the Koran both have a body count in their wake as well. To think that the net, computers and data mining will not do someone, somewhere, a lot of harm would be the thoughts of a fool.
Frankly France exhibits far more intelligence than the people in the US give them credit for. Our system in the US acts like cancer and tries to perpetuate all of our current qualities and wrongs. It sort of self heals regardless of what changes are needed. Here we see all kinds of organized and quite likely criminal opposition to Tesla cars being introduced despite the fact that they are the most superior vehicle one can buy. I wonder to what degree French companies and politicians will resist phasing out diesel engines.
This type of resistance to change is exactly why the US has not been on solar, wind and water power for decades. It is not that it is not good or too expensive. It is all about propaganda and lies and big business wanting to keep a tight grip on energy supplies.
Really folks, just dwell upon this stuff for a bit. If the US has an energy supply issue why do we allow any exports of coal, oil or natural gas at all? If you are short of groceries in your home do you rush to sell what little food you have?
It is obvious that if we allow the population to double we will need to double energy production. And if strict birth control cuts our population in half we can essentially do fine with half as much energy production. The issue extends across almost all miseries common to humanity lately.
It is also reasonable to view nuclear power as a total failure. Two major disasters and a semi major disaster at Thrree Mile Island are reason enough for the world to get rid of nuclear plants completely. If you don't believe that I have a lovely home in Chyrnoble to sell you on the cheap.
The truth is that the system resists change at all costs. Powerful people own oil, coal, gas and nuclear systems. They like their money. The Tesla car demonstrates this issue in spades. Tesla has a breakthrough design and a wonderful product. Make note of how many law suits are attempting to make like impossible for those that own Tesla. And if recent history is a clue there may be fires in the night, untimely deaths, and all kinds of covert actions to try and ruin Tesla. Think about how things really work. The guy responsible for Segway sees all kinds of local laws forbidding the use of the device on sidewalks. Yet electric wheel chairs use the sidewalks and both are electric vehicles. And then I am asked to believe that the owner of Segway gets confused and drives a Segway off a cliff. Despite being a wonderful device the Segway really is not in common use in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Germany and other European nations are quickly eliminating fossil fuels and nuclear. In the US we are behind in applying solar, wind and water energy both in a collective and individual way. But the handwriting is on the wall. Big energy will do every corrupt trick in the book to keep sucking at your wallet. As homes and businesses go off grid we will see much higher rates for homes still on the grid. This is Future Shock. It is rather like Uber threatening to eliminate the taxi industry. It is quite like Tesla threatening to cripple gasoline and diesel producers and the cars and trucks that use gas and diesel. And it is like robots replacing fast food workers. It is all happening at a very high speed and some social chaos will follow.
The people who ordered this deserve to be tried for war crimes. Some individuals were actually tortured to death. Baby Bush would be first in line for a hanging. It makes me sick that the lowest level guards who were following orders were the ones who were drummed out of the service etc.. And the public should know that we caused other nations to apply even worse tortures within the same prisons. I would rather be loyal to humanity than loyal to any nation.
It makes sense to me as two objects attracted to each other close the gap between them over time. The action of gravity supports the notion of time. It could easily be causal to the existance of time as well. Imagine two objects attracting in a system in which time did not exist. The joining of the two objects would be instantanious and violent.
Is it me or is a quadrillion watt laser just something that I can not really grasp? That sounds like a whole bunch of energy applied over a very short period of time. It is sort of like trying to imagine how many grains of sand exist in the world. After the first billion or so the numbers don't mean much to me.
Profiteering is a gentle term for a disease that plagues America. The right wing does not feel that capitalism has anything to do with economics. They view capitalism as a religion. To them raking is huge sums for the least effort is the meaning of life. Materialism is a natural fruit of capitalism. This is what happens when you restrict the faith community in the schools. We have all heard of the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. It should be called the gold calf. It represented and abandonment of God and a worship of wealth. Today we see people worshipping money in every way. Worse yet governmental forces enforce this greed by requiring people to have money. One way or another the govrnment will insist that you agree to have money. If you want to wander about with a tent and not sign up as a member of modern nonsense the land will be called either private or public and your little tent will not be allowed. As my Haitian friend remarked those corporate types belong to Satan. She is sort of right.
One major purpose of car dealerships is to confuse buyers concerning the cost of driving a mile. For example offering a $4,000 cut in price for any trade in that can be dragged in on a garden hose gives the buyer and illusion that the cost per mile of operation is reasonable. If one takes the cost of the vehicle, the interest on the loan, the compulory mainetence fees, the optional maintenance fees, the insurance, repairs, and gasoline over the life of tye car then one can get the cost per mile driven. For example you buy a $30,000 car and the instant depreciation is $10,000 and you only drive 10,000 miles that year the depreciation alone is $1.00 per mile. You first year per mile expenses when totaled may exceed $2.00 per mile. If people calculate the true cost per mile they may suddenly be confronted with the reality that they should not own a car. Dealerships use all kinds of gimmicks to cause people not to understand the cost of driving.
Frankly both the invasive carp as well as the snake head fish are something that interest fishermen and others. Opinions may vary but I'd bet money that a few people will quite deliberately sneak both species into the great lakes. Obviously when this occurs other species may not be able to do well at all but the fishermen will be able to easely catch carp and snake heads. Although the carp would be better raised in fish farms they could be considered a resource as they taste ok. We have had snale heads in south Florida since 1980 and maybe even before that. I've caught quite a few but never cooked one. They are simply a larger version of the American bowfin which have always existed in Florida.
There are many places more wonderful to live than Ohio. In Florida when the job market is tight even a minor misdemeanor can jamb you up for life as far as almost all companies are concerned and it doesn't matter what skill or trade you are in. But you can be elected to Congress and fit right in.
To be free of being a target of crime is also a reasonable human expectation or right. To live in a society that has a reasonable degree of order and regular function might also be described as a human right. To expect the full benefit of medical technology, food and housing as well as legal representation in both civil and criminal issues is also esential. Not to be lied to by our employees that we call "the government" is also vital. How is it that most of these areas only get lip service and any progress is astoundingly slow? Is it reasonable for veterans not to get benefits the moment they are discharged from duty? How can a man be held in a jail for four years awaiting trial? How is it that arrests that lead to not guilty verdicts do not compel government to compensate the person subjected to that false arrest?
Progress is upon us and the social upheaval may stop it all. Just as workers are becomming obsolete in large numbers so will major businesses. Businesses lack a basic sense of co-operation and instead believe in ugly forms of competition. For example GM or Chrysler could have gone to Tesla and taken a lisence to build a set number of vehicles using Tesla's electrical and mechanical designs while offering a differnet body style or accessories. But instead they try every trick in the world to bury Tesla in the dirt. Now watch the electric utilities try to use influence to stop self generation of power for homes. The oil industry is in a panic and I suspect that the tumble in gasoline prices is a futile effort to try to hold onto the market. As 3D printing becomes more advanced factories all over the world will close. Methods of supporting the public must be a prime concern as we are going to see violent social unrest as people feel more and more economic pressure.
Simply dedicate time each day to memorizing anything. For example memorize Hamlet. You may not give a hoot about Hamlet but it gets you accustomed to focusing on a narrow subject for fairly long periods of time. When done with Hamlet pick a novel and try to memorize and maintain all of the novel. Education is focused on exactly that type of thing. It applies even to mathematics. I knew a school girl who committed the entire log tables to memory from one to one thousand in order to be able to conserve time on the SAT exams.
I'm not certain any intelligent life exists on Earth. Compared to what an advanced being might be able to perceive and work with we might be so close to being as dumb as a common earth worm that the difference in intelligence is meaningless. For example give a worm an IQ of 1 and a human an IQ of 2 and an advanced being an IQ of 30,000. As far as i know there has been no prediction of just how advanced a really advanced species might get. It is also obvious that computers may already be far more advanced in certain ways than humans can hope to be and new areas for computer power seem to be opening rather quickly. Much depends on how one sees intelligence. If long life is any indicator turtles would be considered more intelligent than humans and unlike human turtles do not destroy nature or organize wars. Mankind thinks too highly of itself.
As far as i know it was 1961 when the city of Ft. Lauderdale got the first police tank. It was in fear of the dreaded college students on Ft. Lauderdale beach on spring break. It was stored underneath the local public swimming pool. It featured such things as tear gas sprays and rubber bullets. But the heavy, tracked vehicle was a threat as our beach road was normally covered with students. We had as many as 500,000 at one time. About 1962 colleges started to stagger their spring breaks to avoid crowding at resort areas and the FT. Lauderdale police and officials were ugly enough to cause less kids to come to Ft. Lauderdale anyway. And yes, kids really were assaulted for no reason by over worked cops. I was there and saw it first hand. Oh Lord save us from the hordes of scholars descending upon us.
Sadly most young girls are obsessed with clothing and cosmetic products. And frankly there is nothing more likely to ruin a girl than going down that path. Look at the term model closely. Would you rather own a model car or a real car? Girls are socialized to be observable. Their culture involves how they look and not what they are. The Kahn Academy might be a great place to park your young girls to complete mini courses.
In order for people in a nation to support a market place two things are required. The people must have disposable income and leisure time available. Sadly we are living in a time in the US where most people have less and less disposable income and either have way too much liesure time or way too little liesure time. We can assume the unemployed won't be getting "things" very much at all. And those that work anywhere near minimum wage won't be buying much either. And it is not a tax problem as politicians would have you believe. It is the cost of basic survival is too high and the wealth the rich have been allowed to accumulate has ruined the economy. Yes we do need a fair minimum wage and we also need a maximum wage and earnings limit as well. Failure to do this will result in some sort of revolution which may already be under way. Every crime has an element of rebellion against government in it and every arrest costs the tax payer more money. The downward path is chiseled in rock for all to see.
There will be a stunning legal effect if cash is not the method of exchange. The rich will continue to be able to lead criminal lives with very little chance of being caught. But low level criminals will be swept up like never before. The thief with cash from stolen bicycles will not be able to spend his money as he can not verify his money intake. Even for organized crime it will create big problems as the lesser players that the mob depends upon will not be able to explain their income. Even the store owner who pays a bit of protection will become historic as with electronic money the books will never add up. In essence if the exact crime can not be proven the IRS would have people by the short hairs every time. Even the migrant farm workers as well as their employers could be swept up with great ease as electronic money will be unavoidable. Yet there are places such as New jersey where crime may be essential in the lives of most people as the state is known to be so corrupt that organized crime is actually a moderater for governmental and business corruption.
This man is a victem of the politically moderated speech problem. He stated his beliefs and was then considered anti-female and anti black. In reference to black, native people I do not find it outlandish to suppose that there is little demand for esoteric reasoning as they are busy enough trying to eek out a living. I further do not think it is offensive to state that peoples' minds and social customs adapt to what is needful to survive. Therefore I would expect it to be very rare for native people, not exposed heavily to western life, may not have activated abilities in the mind that are more common in urban cultures. That is not looking down on anyone. People simply adapt their minds to their needs. As far as the remarks about female scientists in the workplace he is on target. The men probably enjoyed the company and therefore the men may not be as concentrated on their work. It does not attack the ability of women at all. It points to the difficulty in mixing sexes in some jobs. The notion of non-offensive speech is killing free speech.
The denser the population the more laws, rules and regulations get passed and the worse they get enforced. There is a certain reality that we are all hurdling through space on a rock and we are all doomed as well as the entire human race. As population swells and personal morality drops people become frightened and unable to cope with life. Politicians tossing out reams of laws as pablum to the people in order to get or keep a voting base is simply a form of corruption in itself. People do need to have a spine. To be able to stand and take the arrows and slings of fate while being aware that you are in a losing battle is just part of life. These days we have so many cowards who hide with alcohol or drugs and make all kinds of false justifications for their cowardice that I do not know how we expect to survive as a nation.
So some Casper Milk Toast wets his pants over lyrics that many other people find funny. It seems to me Casper is the one to be punished for being such an over sensitive freak, A minister that complains that a person will burn in eternal hell if they are not a baptized and repentant Christian could be considered as menacing and threatening. These restraints on speech need to stop. A rap singer is says I'm going to eat your baby does it for comic effect. And I suppose that some listeners to rap music salivate over a day in which cops will be gunned down. But most sane people very much realize that the notion of fighting a well trained police force is foolish. And the notion that citizens with hand guns and rifles can put down the military is just plain stupid. There is no city anywhere that the military can not crush with ease. It is only because one goal is to avoid killing innocents that clearing a city of combatants is difficult at all.
Football is modeled after warfare. The idea of charging the line in violent confrontation and almost assuring great injury or death was a common thing to do in the Civil War, WW1 and several lesser wars. At the time people didn't normally live very long and few were feeling good at the age of 40. We have classic players in major plays who called them selves old and senile at 35. So the idea of being snapped in half on a football field seemed quite acceptable and players were told that it was their responsibility to be trained and able to handle the conflict of the game. It is like telling them if they die in the game they just did not try hard enough. In 1860 a 10 year old boy might be treated as an adult. These days some parents consider their offspring to be kids until they are in their 40s. But after they mess up football what about boxing, motorcycle racing and sports that rip people limb from limb? In motorcycle racing there have been incidents in which the brain was bashed completely out of the head. The famous Mike Hailwood actually stopped to attend a dying rider in the middle of a race and other riders were actually driving over the brains on the track. Then again Mike the Bike and his son died in a car going out for fish and chips.
Drunken drivers already cost us a fortune in enforcement, jailing etc.. Now we have another very expensive issue with pot and driving while high. Worse yet the strength of each dose of pot will vary wildly so the user can be much higher than he intended to be or less high than he intended to be. And being that people who have just smoked pot are not able to tell at all how high they are they will tend to drive when many times they should not. Since we already lock up more citizens than any nation on the planet can the tax payer really afford this problem? And just to make it even a darker issue our jails and prisons usually make a person worse than when they offended and the worse the jail or prison the more likely inmates are to turn to a life of crime. We need teams of ministers to be in the jails and being there at all hours to stop what amounts to torture of inmates. Such policies as making it very, very difficult to get any reading material at all, charging huge fees for phone calls which breaks up families, failure to deliver quick medical care in emergencies and deliberate abuse by prison staff need to be halted dead in their tracks. The idea is to release a better inmate and not fill inmates with rage that will effect their behavior when released.
Traditional powers always want to hold the turf. The FAA wants to keep its authority. But this will distill into a solution that the FAA may not like. Drones are proving to be very useful and are rapidly becomming more and more useful. If the skies can not tolerate both drones and traditional aircraft it may well be time to ground planes almost completely as drones have more to offer most people. Keep in mind that passenger carrying drones can easily exist. The Air Force is more than slightly aware that human pilots are not ideal in fighter type air craft. Even the notion of a human controller in a remore location is not such a great idea as autonomous drones are rapidly becomming more and more capable and less likely to err than human controllers. In some ways weapons of war with very high tech designs begin to resemble ancient ideas of war machines. For example artillary barges which either had no ability to guide themselves or very small propellers and engines to be able to do a bit of manuvering can be seen in modern designs. A large vessel tows an unmanned barge that sits so low to the water that water sloshes on its deck. The sides are V shaped to ward off strikes by guns or torpedoes. The barge is able to go the last two or three hundred miles under its own engine. It is a highly armed device with missile ports and other high tech weapons that pop up and can rain hell on a region. It is all weapon and all armour. No sailors are at risk at all. When the barge depletes its weapons it can return to the mother ship or pull into the mouth of a harbor and scuttle itself thuse sealing off the harbor.
The net and computers are simply tools. In fact they are very powerful and world changing tools. And the funny thing is that good things almost always take a life here and there. How many people have perished from a table saw accident? And even as something as innocent as a play or a sonnet will tend to leave a body count. I'd bet money that arguments by Shakespeare experts have led to violence now and then over the meaning of a phrase in some work of Shakespeare. And the Bible and the Koran both have a body count in their wake as well. To think that the net, computers and data mining will not do someone, somewhere, a lot of harm would be the thoughts of a fool.
Frankly France exhibits far more intelligence than the people in the US give them credit for. Our system in the US acts like cancer and tries to perpetuate all of our current qualities and wrongs. It sort of self heals regardless of what changes are needed. Here we see all kinds of organized and quite likely criminal opposition to Tesla cars being introduced despite the fact that they are the most superior vehicle one can buy. I wonder to what degree French companies and politicians will resist phasing out diesel engines. This type of resistance to change is exactly why the US has not been on solar, wind and water power for decades. It is not that it is not good or too expensive. It is all about propaganda and lies and big business wanting to keep a tight grip on energy supplies. Really folks, just dwell upon this stuff for a bit. If the US has an energy supply issue why do we allow any exports of coal, oil or natural gas at all? If you are short of groceries in your home do you rush to sell what little food you have?
It is obvious that if we allow the population to double we will need to double energy production. And if strict birth control cuts our population in half we can essentially do fine with half as much energy production. The issue extends across almost all miseries common to humanity lately. It is also reasonable to view nuclear power as a total failure. Two major disasters and a semi major disaster at Thrree Mile Island are reason enough for the world to get rid of nuclear plants completely. If you don't believe that I have a lovely home in Chyrnoble to sell you on the cheap. The truth is that the system resists change at all costs. Powerful people own oil, coal, gas and nuclear systems. They like their money. The Tesla car demonstrates this issue in spades. Tesla has a breakthrough design and a wonderful product. Make note of how many law suits are attempting to make like impossible for those that own Tesla. And if recent history is a clue there may be fires in the night, untimely deaths, and all kinds of covert actions to try and ruin Tesla. Think about how things really work. The guy responsible for Segway sees all kinds of local laws forbidding the use of the device on sidewalks. Yet electric wheel chairs use the sidewalks and both are electric vehicles. And then I am asked to believe that the owner of Segway gets confused and drives a Segway off a cliff. Despite being a wonderful device the Segway really is not in common use in the US.