It downright sucks, they take all the fun out of a spectacular field.
Have you ever watched NASA TV? Only the United States Government could take the most exciting topic ever -- space exploration -- and turn it into television programming so dry and boring, it makes you want to gouge your eyes out.
Each plane is equipped with a transponder. It receives GPS position, and broadcasts a packet of data once per second (much more frequently than the usual radar sweep of 10-15 seconds) containing identity, position, aircraft type, speed, heading, altitude, and more. With just a few thousand dollars worth of optional equipment, each plane can also recieve these broadcast packets of information DIRECTLY from other aircraft.
When the ability to receive this data becomes universal, couldn't we do away with ground controllers altogether? Because all it would take are some simple "right of way" rules and a small amount of computing power for each plane to autonomously compute and execute the slight course adjustments needed to avoid other aircraft, and even to avoid intersecting another aircraft's wake vortices.
The ground-based system rebroadcasts ALL of its data (including skin-paint targets) on a separate radio frequency, so any airplane (or even ground observers) can learn about everything in the airspace.
This gave me some pause. Couldn't the information be used by an upgraded MANPAD to ensure it connects with its target? Flares and chaff would no longer be a distraction for this kind of MANPAD.
What makes you think Hurd will ever become reality? Everything I've read indicates that Hurd development is hopelessly unfocussed and directionless, if not stopped. I would welcome any evidence to the contrary.
There is reluctance to attempt to reproduce a phenomenon as destructive as a tornado, but controlled tornadoes could reduce hazards by relieving instability rather than create hazards. A small tornado firmly anchored over a strongly built station would not be a hazard.
This is some serious out-of-the-box thinking, so I will resist the urge to take a cheap shot at it by asking, "What could possibly go wrong?"
This intriguing idea deserves further study and maybe a pilot plant.
I double-checked his math and came up with a similar answer: given his assumptions, you'd need 2.23 square meters of solar cells on your car to make this a reality.
Of course, one thing neither of us took into account is that the effective surface area is maximized when the cells are perpendicular to the light source. When the sun is low in the sky, any cells on your car's roof will be poorly angled for capturing solar energy. Still, this could help keep your battery topped-up.
The article says that to achieve the 501 km range, it had to be driven at "average speeds of around 55 km (34 miles) per hour". That's not viable for highway usage.
And as for your sig: whether universal health care is socialist or not depends on how it is achieved.
If we make voluntary charitable contributions that empower low-income people to purchase health insurance, that is the noble, effective, non-socialist way to go about it.
The other way to do it is for government to seize a greater portion of our income against our will. And then, its countless and growing layers of bureaucracy will dissipate most of those funds; little will be left over for the people who actually need assistance. That's the coercive, inefficient, socialist way to go about it.
Even during the Bush administration, the New York Times regularly leaked classified information without consequence. Don't expect infosec to be tighter now!
The original Reagan-era vision for the space station was to spend $8 billion to build a design that included hangars in which large interplanetary spacecraft would be assembled. (Those facilities were eliminated in one of the several Congressionally-mandated "money-saving" redesigns.) Too bad we have to wait at least 40 years to see that vision realized.
I've authorized Virgin Mobile to charge $15 to my credit card every 90 days. Yes, that works out to $5 per month. I get more than enough minutes to meet my needs. They call this the "Auto Top-Up" plan -- look into it people.
A plug-in hybrid's "miles-per-gallon" rating can be made arbitrarily high -- it just depends on the gasoline/grid electricity "blend assumption" made during the calculation.
As the CNN article points out, "When gasoline is providing [all] the power, the Volt might get as much as 50 mpg."
If you assume that 98% of the time the car operates on grid electricity, hey, you'll only consume 0.4 gallons in 1000 miles, that's 2500 miles-per-gallon!
And to take the argument to the ultimate extreme, if you assume the car will operate on grid electricity 100% of the time, it's a classic divide-by-zero situation: infinite miles-per-gallon.
So you can see why a miles-per-gallon statistic is worth very little when it comes to plug-in hybrids.
Instead of coming up with an arbitrary blend assumption that won't exactly match the behavior of any driver, the EPA should simply publish two economy ratings: the miles-per-gallon when the car is propelled strictly by gasoline, and the miles-per-kilowatt-hour when the car is propelled strictly by grid electricity. Yes, this is more complex than publishing a single figure of merit, and a small percentage of consumers will never understand it, but on the other hand, it would cause lots of consumers to study the issue and actually learn something. And avoid the unrealistic hype of "zomg, the 230 mile-per-gallon car!"
How about miles per pound of carbon dioxide emission?
No good. This figure is also going to vary quite a bit, depending on the assumed gasoline/grid electricity blend. (Plus, not everyone buys into the alarmism over CO2.)
I've always thought it hubris for scientists to take a set of gene sequences, the functions of which are not yet understood, and proclaim them "junk."
From time to time an article like this comes along, proving me correct.
The reason we shouldn't "build wind farms as fast as possible" is that they don't provide a good return on investment. And when capital is diverted from a high-return project into a lower-return project, the unemployment rate becomes higher than it otherwise would be. Mindless devotion to everything "green" has consequences: human beings who become more impoverished, and more dependent on coercive transfers of wealth!
As the cost of manufacturing wind turbines decreases, a wind farm's return on investment increases. So sure, we should periodically re-evaluate the feasibility of these projects, and proceed when it makes sense to do so.
Why have British/Australian journalists never been taught a consistent policy for capitalizing acronyms? Many a British article refers to NATO as Nato, and NASA as Nasa. This FA defines an acronym "Bkis" thusly:
Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (Bkis)
And yet the same article refers to PCs, not Pcs, and DDOS attacks, not Ddos attacks. It's maddening.
Now that one of wind power's biggest supporters (Pickens) is at least partially throwing in the towel, here's hoping that some people will begin to realize that not every "green" initiative is worth its economic cost.
it is surprisingly hard to embrace a new system of measurement when you've spent your entire life thinking in different terms. Try as I might, I still can't picture a kilometer without converting it to a mile first... your brain gets locked into a certain measurement pattern pretty early in life and it's very difficult to get out of it
This is exactly why, when I was on a committee to reform the math curriculum in my school district, I urged them to ensure kids become very familiar with metric units at an early age.
The math teachers on the committee didn't seem to "get" my point, and I was ignored.
One of the significant negative repercussions presented by the large number of illegal immigrants is the burden it places on the health care system. Over half of all undocumented workers are uninsured, and use of emergency-room facilities by uninsured patients has led to a massive increase in uncompensated hospital costs. Current legislation legally binds hospitals to treat all patients in emergency situations; such legislation, however is severely under funded, such that, in last five years, more than 84 California hospitals have been forced to shut down due to financial strain.
Am I advocating denying them emergency-room services? No. But the longer we go without meaningful border security, the worse this problem will get. There's nothing mean-spirited about requiring people to live, go to school, and get their healthcare in the country of which they are actually citizens.
They have no idea how much fuel will cost 20 years from now. Therefore, they have no idea whether offering free-fuel-for-life leases will be highly profitable, or financially ruinous.
one aim should be to make tools that will serve skilled professionals--not to lower the level of expressiveness to serve people who can hardly understand the problems, let alone express solutions.
But shouldn't we keep an eye toward eventually moving into a Star Trek-like future, where anyone can ask things like, "Computer: is there a compound that is superconducting at 50 deg C? If so, what is the formula?" And the 48-core, terahertz processor cranks through sophisticated molecular models to find the answer.
When you encountered these flakey autopilot behaviors, did you submit a DR to the aircraft manufacturer? Is it even possible for a pilot to do this? Or are there hundreds of pilots independently discovering these flakey behaviors -- with no formal mechanism for submitting feedback to the manufacturer and getting the problem corrected?
you should give up your internet access, move to a trailer, and accept a job that takes 1/10th of your current salary and still be ecstatically happy.
There you go again, telling others what they should do.
you're contradicting yourself by saying you couldn't live without those things and be as happy.
There's no reason, other than to falsify your ridiculous thought experiment, to voluntarily surrender my internet access. But if it were forcibly taken away from me, my reaction would be thus: I would be a marginally less happy person, and at the same time I would still be quite grateful that my overall standard of living is higher than King George III's. There is no contradiction here.
you're a libertarian, now I understand the posts. You lack any reasonable understanding of economics, as most libertarians do.
I prefer the term "classic liberal." I guess Milton Friedman and I should have never expressed our opinions, because "LateArthurDent" asserts that we are economic rubes. LOL
the working conditions are bad, the employee can't threaten to quit
Unless a gun is held to the employee's head (or similar coercive measure, which of course I'm opposed to), any employee is free to stop providing labor as soon as he or she perceives that the arrangement is no longer advantageous to them. Employees who foolishly continue to work in an arrangement that's no longer to their advantage deserve no sympathy. Asking an employee to work on a weekend is not coercive, LOL. Neither is asking an employee to use unsafe equipment in a filthy, hot environment -- as long as that employee is free to hit the exit and never return.
In my life I've been fortunate enough to encounter several employers who made offers that I agreed to, because I felt they'd be advantageous to me. Invariably, those employers controlled huge amounts of resources. Ohh, I'm so oppressed!
the moment anyone actually puts some thought into it, they realize monopoly anti-trust regulations are necessary
I never argued against these. It's clear that if a company like AIG is going to (a) use faulty risk models or (b) fail to hedge against the worst-case scenario predicted by those risk models, it should be broken up before it becomes "too big to fail."
taxation that performs some amount of wealth redistribution is necessary
Taxation is the coercive, inefficient form of wealth redistribution (the aid recipients get what's left over after countless layers of bureaucracy take their cut); voluntary charitable contributions are the noble, effective form of wealth redistribution. Do you realize that lower taxation results in a net increase in wealth redistribution? I doubt it; seems like the coercive form is the only kind you care about.
If the medium-class / upper-class gap rises too much, that means the unhappy middle-class outnumbers the upper-class
You're still class-obsessed, I see. They're only unhappy when the likes of you tells them they're supposed to be. The likes of me, who point out how much better off they are than 99.8% of the people who have lived throughout human history, are a mortal threat to your agenda.
You can't compare the middle class of today with the middle class of forty years ago.
You'd be wise not to tell others what they can't do -- especially when you're demonstrably wrong. Not only can I make this kind of comparison, I did.
You don't compare the standard of living of today directly with the standard of living of the past.
Yes, I do -- I do this all the time, and so should everyone else. There would be a lot less misery and whining in the world if people developed an appreciation for how bloody lucky they are to be living in the 21st century. I am genuinely grateful that my standard of living is higher than that of King George III. I derive real, tangible happiness from knowing this. I wouldn't trade my internet access for his staff of servants and/or crown jewels. Most of the perceived deprivation in the world would be eliminated if people were taught to put their living condition in historical perspective, rather than measuring it against the latest Hollywood skank-of-the-month. In the quest to increase global levels of happiness, this is a low-hanging fruit that's rarely plucked. If everyone were taught to clearly see the path that got us to our current enviable position, we'd all be on the same page regarding the benefits of building the next segment of that path.
The question you need to ask is whether the difference in income between the richest people and our current middle class has stayed proportionally the same or whether the gap is bigger.
No, I don't need or even want to ask this question. You are fixated on matters of class.
ideally, the gap between the classes should diminish by having the wealth in the lower and middle classes increase at a faster rate than the upper class
Why are you obsessed with matters of class? Ideally, individual liberties will be maximally respected and upheld. If that goal is accomplished, it will pretty much guarantee that the poor will get richer at a rapid clip. And if that goal is accomplished, why should anyone care whether the poor get richer at a faster rate than the rich get richer, or vice versa? No good can come of inciting class resentment for the sake of inciting class resentment. Let those chips fall where they may.
You can't compare the middle class of today with the middle class of forty years ago. The middle class is defined by the income differences of people living at the same time. The question you need to ask is whether the difference in income between the richest people and our current middle class has stayed proportionally the same or whether the gap is bigger.
Why do you want to define it that way?
Suppose an omnipotent being offered to transform society as follows: all the inventions of the last 300 years would be erased, but you, personally, would be 1000 times richer than the average miserable sod. I would not take that deal -- I'd lose access to computers, modern medicine, and lots of other stuff that I love. (I bet you wouldn't take that deal either.) I'd rather be an average shmoe in 2009 -- even if I'm not middle-class, by your definition -- than fabulously wealthy in 1709. I don't care if the gap between me and the "rich" increases exponentially, if it means things keep getting better for me.
It seems like you would hurt the living standards of average people simply out of spite for the rich. Shame on you.
could have meant much more leisure time In fact, people do tend to have much more leisure time these days than before the invention of our many labor-saving devices.
increasingly pointless jobs How about we let the person paying the salary, not h4rm0ny, determine whether a job is pointless?
Amazing, isn't it? Two to three degrees in temperature reduction in a major city just by resurfacing, repainting, and planting trees. Yeah, sure, it's not sexy. But the cost savings... staggering
Are they? I don't see where you've even begun to attempt to estimate the cost of doing this. To resurface all of our roads would itself have a staggering cost. Until someone estimates the cost of doing this, any claim that the savings would be "staggering" is B.S.
Slashdot Mirror
It downright sucks, they take all the fun out of a spectacular field.
Have you ever watched NASA TV? Only the United States Government could take the most exciting topic ever -- space exploration -- and turn it into television programming so dry and boring, it makes you want to gouge your eyes out.
Each plane is equipped with a transponder. It receives GPS position, and broadcasts a packet of data once per second (much more frequently than the usual radar sweep of 10-15 seconds) containing identity, position, aircraft type, speed, heading, altitude, and more. With just a few thousand dollars worth of optional equipment, each plane can also recieve these broadcast packets of information DIRECTLY from other aircraft.
When the ability to receive this data becomes universal, couldn't we do away with ground controllers altogether? Because all it would take are some simple "right of way" rules and a small amount of computing power for each plane to autonomously compute and execute the slight course adjustments needed to avoid other aircraft, and even to avoid intersecting another aircraft's wake vortices.
The ground-based system rebroadcasts ALL of its data (including skin-paint targets) on a separate radio frequency, so any airplane (or even ground observers) can learn about everything in the airspace.
This gave me some pause. Couldn't the information be used by an upgraded MANPAD to ensure it connects with its target? Flares and chaff would no longer be a distraction for this kind of MANPAD.
when Hurd becomes reality
What makes you think Hurd will ever become reality? Everything I've read indicates that Hurd development is hopelessly unfocussed and directionless, if not stopped. I would welcome any evidence to the contrary.
There is reluctance to attempt to reproduce a phenomenon as destructive as a tornado, but controlled tornadoes could reduce hazards by relieving instability rather than create hazards. A small tornado firmly anchored over a strongly built station would not be a hazard.
This is some serious out-of-the-box thinking, so I will resist the urge to take a cheap shot at it by asking, "What could possibly go wrong?"
This intriguing idea deserves further study and maybe a pilot plant.
I double-checked his math and came up with a similar answer: given his assumptions, you'd need 2.23 square meters of solar cells on your car to make this a reality.
Of course, one thing neither of us took into account is that the effective surface area is maximized when the cells are perpendicular to the light source. When the sun is low in the sky, any cells on your car's roof will be poorly angled for capturing solar energy. Still, this could help keep your battery topped-up.
The article says that to achieve the 501 km range, it had to be driven at "average speeds of around 55 km (34 miles) per hour". That's not viable for highway usage.
And as for your sig: whether universal health care is socialist or not depends on how it is achieved.
If we make voluntary charitable contributions that empower low-income people to purchase health insurance, that is the noble, effective, non-socialist way to go about it.
The other way to do it is for government to seize a greater portion of our income against our will. And then, its countless and growing layers of bureaucracy will dissipate most of those funds; little will be left over for the people who actually need assistance. That's the coercive, inefficient, socialist way to go about it.
I suspect you're in favor of the latter.
Even during the Bush administration, the New York Times regularly leaked classified information without consequence. Don't expect infosec to be tighter now!
The original Reagan-era vision for the space station was to spend $8 billion to build a design that included hangars in which large interplanetary spacecraft would be assembled. (Those facilities were eliminated in one of the several Congressionally-mandated "money-saving" redesigns.) Too bad we have to wait at least 40 years to see that vision realized.
I've authorized Virgin Mobile to charge $15 to my credit card every 90 days. Yes, that works out to $5 per month. I get more than enough minutes to meet my needs. They call this the "Auto Top-Up" plan -- look into it people.
A plug-in hybrid's "miles-per-gallon" rating can be made arbitrarily high -- it just depends on the gasoline/grid electricity "blend assumption" made during the calculation.
So you can see why a miles-per-gallon statistic is worth very little when it comes to plug-in hybrids.
Instead of coming up with an arbitrary blend assumption that won't exactly match the behavior of any driver, the EPA should simply publish two economy ratings: the miles-per-gallon when the car is propelled strictly by gasoline, and the miles-per-kilowatt-hour when the car is propelled strictly by grid electricity. Yes, this is more complex than publishing a single figure of merit, and a small percentage of consumers will never understand it, but on the other hand, it would cause lots of consumers to study the issue and actually learn something. And avoid the unrealistic hype of "zomg, the 230 mile-per-gallon car!"
How about miles per pound of carbon dioxide emission?
No good. This figure is also going to vary quite a bit, depending on the assumed gasoline/grid electricity blend. (Plus, not everyone buys into the alarmism over CO2.)
I've always thought it hubris for scientists to take a set of gene sequences, the functions of which are not yet understood, and proclaim them "junk." From time to time an article like this comes along, proving me correct.
The reason we shouldn't "build wind farms as fast as possible" is that they don't provide a good return on investment. And when capital is diverted from a high-return project into a lower-return project, the unemployment rate becomes higher than it otherwise would be. Mindless devotion to everything "green" has consequences: human beings who become more impoverished, and more dependent on coercive transfers of wealth!
As the cost of manufacturing wind turbines decreases, a wind farm's return on investment increases. So sure, we should periodically re-evaluate the feasibility of these projects, and proceed when it makes sense to do so.
start taking a significant chunk of that energy out of the atmosphere
The largest conceivable wind turbine will be perched atop a tower, at most, several hundred feet tall.
But most of the earth's wind energy is in the jet stream -- totally untappable by wind turbines, because it's far above the accessible altitudes.
(off topic)
Why have British/Australian journalists never been taught a consistent policy for capitalizing acronyms? Many a British article refers to NATO as Nato, and NASA as Nasa. This FA defines an acronym "Bkis" thusly:
Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (Bkis)
And yet the same article refers to PCs, not Pcs, and DDOS attacks, not Ddos attacks. It's maddening.
Lots of people point out that wind energy is not yet competitive with more traditional sources -- and that government spending on green energy kills on average 2.2 jobs for every job it creates ( http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf ).
Now that one of wind power's biggest supporters (Pickens) is at least partially throwing in the towel, here's hoping that some people will begin to realize that not every "green" initiative is worth its economic cost.
it is surprisingly hard to embrace a new system of measurement when you've spent your entire life thinking in different terms. Try as I might, I still can't picture a kilometer without converting it to a mile first... your brain gets locked into a certain measurement pattern pretty early in life and it's very difficult to get out of it
This is exactly why, when I was on a committee to reform the math curriculum in my school district, I urged them to ensure kids become very familiar with metric units at an early age.
The math teachers on the committee didn't seem to "get" my point, and I was ignored.
From http://dhc.ucdavis.edu/convocation/ESW07/Border%20Crossings.htm:
One of the significant negative repercussions presented by the large number of illegal immigrants is the burden it places on the health care system. Over half of all undocumented workers are uninsured, and use of emergency-room facilities by uninsured patients has led to a massive increase in uncompensated hospital costs. Current legislation legally binds hospitals to treat all patients in emergency situations; such legislation, however is severely under funded, such that, in last five years, more than 84 California hospitals have been forced to shut down due to financial strain.
Am I advocating denying them emergency-room services? No. But the longer we go without meaningful border security, the worse this problem will get. There's nothing mean-spirited about requiring people to live, go to school, and get their healthcare in the country of which they are actually citizens.
They have no idea how much fuel will cost 20 years from now. Therefore, they have no idea whether offering free-fuel-for-life leases will be highly profitable, or financially ruinous.
one aim should be to make tools that will serve skilled professionals--not to lower the level of expressiveness to serve people who can hardly understand the problems, let alone express solutions.
But shouldn't we keep an eye toward eventually moving into a Star Trek-like future, where anyone can ask things like, "Computer: is there a compound that is superconducting at 50 deg C? If so, what is the formula?" And the 48-core, terahertz processor cranks through sophisticated molecular models to find the answer.
When you encountered these flakey autopilot behaviors, did you submit a DR to the aircraft manufacturer? Is it even possible for a pilot to do this? Or are there hundreds of pilots independently discovering these flakey behaviors -- with no formal mechanism for submitting feedback to the manufacturer and getting the problem corrected?
you should give up your internet access, move to a trailer, and accept a job that takes 1/10th of your current salary and still be ecstatically happy.
There you go again, telling others what they should do.
you're contradicting yourself by saying you couldn't live without those things and be as happy.
There's no reason, other than to falsify your ridiculous thought experiment, to voluntarily surrender my internet access. But if it were forcibly taken away from me, my reaction would be thus: I would be a marginally less happy person, and at the same time I would still be quite grateful that my overall standard of living is higher than King George III's. There is no contradiction here.
you're a libertarian, now I understand the posts. You lack any reasonable understanding of economics, as most libertarians do.
I prefer the term "classic liberal." I guess Milton Friedman and I should have never expressed our opinions, because "LateArthurDent" asserts that we are economic rubes. LOL
the working conditions are bad, the employee can't threaten to quit
Unless a gun is held to the employee's head (or similar coercive measure, which of course I'm opposed to), any employee is free to stop providing labor as soon as he or she perceives that the arrangement is no longer advantageous to them. Employees who foolishly continue to work in an arrangement that's no longer to their advantage deserve no sympathy. Asking an employee to work on a weekend is not coercive, LOL. Neither is asking an employee to use unsafe equipment in a filthy, hot environment -- as long as that employee is free to hit the exit and never return.
In my life I've been fortunate enough to encounter several employers who made offers that I agreed to, because I felt they'd be advantageous to me. Invariably, those employers controlled huge amounts of resources. Ohh, I'm so oppressed!
the moment anyone actually puts some thought into it, they realize monopoly anti-trust regulations are necessary
I never argued against these. It's clear that if a company like AIG is going to (a) use faulty risk models or (b) fail to hedge against the worst-case scenario predicted by those risk models, it should be broken up before it becomes "too big to fail."
taxation that performs some amount of wealth redistribution is necessary
Taxation is the coercive, inefficient form of wealth redistribution (the aid recipients get what's left over after countless layers of bureaucracy take their cut); voluntary charitable contributions are the noble, effective form of wealth redistribution. Do you realize that lower taxation results in a net increase in wealth redistribution? I doubt it; seems like the coercive form is the only kind you care about.
If the medium-class / upper-class gap rises too much, that means the unhappy middle-class outnumbers the upper-class
You're still class-obsessed, I see. They're only unhappy when the likes of you tells them they're supposed to be. The likes of me, who point out how much better off they are than 99.8% of the people who have lived throughout human history, are a mortal threat to your agenda.
You can't compare the middle class of today with the middle class of forty years ago.
You'd be wise not to tell others what they can't do -- especially when you're demonstrably wrong. Not only can I make this kind of comparison, I did.
You don't compare the standard of living of today directly with the standard of living of the past.
Yes, I do -- I do this all the time, and so should everyone else. There would be a lot less misery and whining in the world if people developed an appreciation for how bloody lucky they are to be living in the 21st century. I am genuinely grateful that my standard of living is higher than that of King George III. I derive real, tangible happiness from knowing this. I wouldn't trade my internet access for his staff of servants and/or crown jewels. Most of the perceived deprivation in the world would be eliminated if people were taught to put their living condition in historical perspective, rather than measuring it against the latest Hollywood skank-of-the-month. In the quest to increase global levels of happiness, this is a low-hanging fruit that's rarely plucked. If everyone were taught to clearly see the path that got us to our current enviable position, we'd all be on the same page regarding the benefits of building the next segment of that path.
The question you need to ask is whether the difference in income between the richest people and our current middle class has stayed proportionally the same or whether the gap is bigger.
No, I don't need or even want to ask this question. You are fixated on matters of class.
ideally, the gap between the classes should diminish by having the wealth in the lower and middle classes increase at a faster rate than the upper class
Why are you obsessed with matters of class? Ideally, individual liberties will be maximally respected and upheld. If that goal is accomplished, it will pretty much guarantee that the poor will get richer at a rapid clip. And if that goal is accomplished, why should anyone care whether the poor get richer at a faster rate than the rich get richer, or vice versa? No good can come of inciting class resentment for the sake of inciting class resentment. Let those chips fall where they may.
You can't compare the middle class of today with the middle class of forty years ago. The middle class is defined by the income differences of people living at the same time. The question you need to ask is whether the difference in income between the richest people and our current middle class has stayed proportionally the same or whether the gap is bigger.
Why do you want to define it that way?
Suppose an omnipotent being offered to transform society as follows: all the inventions of the last 300 years would be erased, but you, personally, would be 1000 times richer than the average miserable sod. I would not take that deal -- I'd lose access to computers, modern medicine, and lots of other stuff that I love. (I bet you wouldn't take that deal either.) I'd rather be an average shmoe in 2009 -- even if I'm not middle-class, by your definition -- than fabulously wealthy in 1709. I don't care if the gap between me and the "rich" increases exponentially, if it means things keep getting better for me.
It seems like you would hurt the living standards of average people simply out of spite for the rich. Shame on you.
could have meant much more leisure time
In fact, people do tend to have much more leisure time these days than before the invention of our many labor-saving devices.
increasingly pointless jobs
How about we let the person paying the salary, not h4rm0ny, determine whether a job is pointless?
Amazing, isn't it? Two to three degrees in temperature reduction in a major city just by resurfacing, repainting, and planting trees. Yeah, sure, it's not sexy. But the cost savings ... staggering
Are they? I don't see where you've even begun to attempt to estimate the cost of doing this. To resurface all of our roads would itself have a staggering cost. Until someone estimates the cost of doing this, any claim that the savings would be "staggering" is B.S.