Storing liquid CO2 is a stupid-ass idea. It will eventually be released into the atmosphere.
But, if, if you can separate out the carbon, you've found a way to sequester CO2. Of course, you've also discovered a perpetual motion machine, so I'm not holding my breath.
Recycling it is only a temporary solution. Given the amount we expel into the atmosphere versus the amount we actually require, very temporary.
The condensation run off from the window-unit air conditioners in my house generate about 100 liters every 24 hours.
First of all, I'm calling bullshit on this. Either you live in a swamp, or there's something wrong with your air conditioner. Buy a new one and save the world 1kWh/day instead of producing distilled water with electricity.
Secondly, you realize you're advocating air conditioning as a means of water purification for undeveloped nations? That's just goofy.
Then you say a "3 or 4 square meter" solar panel is "cheap to make". And, assuming such a thing would even run a single air conditioner, you'd need one for, say, every two African villagers. Let's say this contraption costs $2000, which is a conservative figure. To outfit 100 million Africans, you're talking about $100 billion. And then of course who knows how long the things will last and whether they will be immediately confiscated by warlords and diverted to people who are actually productive enough to afford solar panels.
So, by now we've gotten to the point where you've completely lost your mind. As further evidence, "with a lot less complexity... than a boiler-driven generator". Umm, okay.
Yeah, I like how the conspiracy nuts think Hydrogen is meant to keep us dependent on the oil companies. Hydrogen benefits the nuclear industry, because they can create it most efficiently at ridiculously high temperatures. Add in the carbon == bad crowd and what you get is a push by nuclear to beat out coal in replacing oil for transportation. The oil companies would love to see alcohol fuels, because they're basically just distribution channels nowadays anyways. "Big coal" would be happiest if everyone drove electric cars.
CO production as a route to synthetic fuels is an exciting, and likely, prospect. But, looking at your writeup on "carbon negative" energy production, I see the same problem I've seen myself -- that producing pure carbon yields little actual energy and no useful byproducts. And producing CO, via zinc refining or some other process, isn't really "carbon negative", because you're just going to sell that CO to somebody who will likely use it to produce CO2 at some point or recycle it in a closed system.
Regardless, that seems to be the current goal of the new energy economy -- to extract carbon from hydrocarbon fuels and bury it someplace. But we still haven't exactly figured out how to store H very well without C anyways. And, as you point out, pure C is still valuable for many processes. So we may be ahead of ourselves, or behind, depending on how you look at it.
You're absolutely right. The problem is, we don't know exactly what is sustainable. Hell, listen to most people, and we don't know exactly what quantity of external inputs such as oil and gas are being used to support our unsustainable lifestyles. That I can agree with. And it's a real problem.
But, here's what I don't get:
To have arts/literature/culture, we must have cities. That's the argument, right?
But cities are expensive. Cities are an emergent phenomenon. Most cities are not sustainable and probably shouldn't exist. If you look around your city, and don't see a plentiful natural resource that requires humans to exploit, such as a mine or a bay or a transportation hub, you don't really live in a city. You live in an artificial creation. You live in a housing addition. You live in a possible future death trap.
So, your argument seems to be that cities exist to produce art/literature/culture. But, in reality, cities exist for the same reasons piles of ants exist on dead insects. There is a nearby resource that people are willing to crowd together to exploit. The "artist" in this example would be the one ant that decides to sit down and eat instead of taking his share of dead insect back to the ant hole. If anything, art/literature/culture is a response to this unnatural crowding and/or abundance. And when the dead insect is gone, the city goes away too.
So, if for many cities, the "dead insect" is fossil fuels or increased production due to fossil fuels, why should we invest in cities? In 500 years, will our descendants look back and say "we don't have fuel or Mars colonies, but, dammit, our forebears gave us this art and literature and we're thankful!" ???
That post is 100% bullshit. Every figure you cite is wrong. Instead of correcting you, again, like others have done, you're just going on my foes list.
There are 8 acres of land for every person in the US. There is just about the same amount for every person in Africa. That figure includes each area's respective amounts of desert/mountains/grassland, which are surprisingly similar.
And, while the US is dependent upon resources from all across the globe, 8 acres really is quite a bit when you think about it. On 8 acres, any American should be able to heat and cool a reasonably sized house, produce a reasonable amount of fuel for a small car, feed himself grains and vegetables and meats, produce all manner of household chemicals, and generally maintain a level of prosperity beyond that common in the US just a century ago.
All this can be done without a drop of oil or an ounce of coal.
So, in a sense, you're right. But, in another sense, you're still an asshole if you're driving a Hummer:p
You forgot "sign up for the Army Reserves" and/or "watch as 10% of your income is taken by the government and used to keep oil flowing from the middle east."
And, then, what do I do in 10 years? Buy a car that runs on coal?
Anything can make sense if you look for the conspiracy angle.
Everyone knows the telecoms are in trouble. It's a conspiracy of the laws of physics that their little copper wires can't carry the bandwidth of a coax cable. They've been whining about "making investments" for years now. Usually, they whine in the direction of Washington, asking their regulators to allow them to engage in all sorts of product bundling and monopolistic tactics in order to "recoup their costs".
So, given that you're a cash-strapped regulated monopoly with a failing business model, how exactly would you convince the government, that lately has taken a greater interest in spying on its citizens, to help you out?
DRM is a hotbutton issue, and it does relate to freedom, but the freedom of a particular piece of content, not the freedom of a particular piece of software capable of displaying that content.
Perhaps you're looking at things in a narrow way. In the grand sense, GPL'd software is the content. One of the purposes of the DRM provisions in GPL 3 is to prevent hardware manufacturers from creating devices that effectively prevent you from using the content, GPL'd software, in the way it was intended:
Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.
No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological protection measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work as part of a system to generate or access certain data constitutes general permission at least for development, distribution and use, under this License, of other software capable of accessing the same data.
The moon is great and all. It does, in the long run, in fact help things like sustainability. And I'm not sure about other reasons like H3. But I just don't think it's realistic anymore. Going to the moon will get us advances in rocketry, robotics, and solar panels. And, with NASA, the focus is always on doing things the best way regardless of cost. Does anybody really need more expensive robots and solar panels to make their lives better?
Perhaps we would get more out of sending a few people into the middle of the Pacific and keeping them there for a few years. Let's see how cheaply we can pull off something like that. Instead of expensive electronics, equip them with basic, indestructible technology. We'd get advances in cheap renewable energy, micro-manufacturing, more efficient farming, and affordable, reliable technologies to perform basic tasks like water purification and waste treatment. Perhaps even self-replicating machines would benefit.
I'd rather see research in giving people with nothing more than air, water, and sunlight a standard of living higher than subsistence than figuring out new ways of extracting water from moon dust and building solar panels that work in the arctic. But, like you, I'm probably in the minority here on Slashdot in that regard.
As for traffic lights, those are a special case, not white, and must be heavy-duty. But, that's beside the point:
LED lights for sale today are still less efficient than the average compact fluorescent, and nowhere near as efficient as fluorescent tubes, but these guys claim to have made a breakthrough. Perhaps LEDs that replace fluorescents could come soon after all.
Get a small refrigerator and shop for only one or two days worth of meals. A smaller fridge is going to save on your electrical bill.
Actually, the small "dorm" refrigerators are so horribly built that they use about as much electricity as a normal sized fridge. The thing that will make a difference, though, is having a new fridge versus an older one. Same goes for old A/C units, don't bother with those.
Blue-flame heaters. Live in a home older than 30-40 yrs? You probably have enough air exchange to use a blue flame heater, which is 100% efficient. Screw the old furnace or even the new 93% unit, blue flame is 100% efficient and uses no electricity! We got one after a week-long ice storm and discovered it lowered our total natural gas bill by 40%.
Ventless heaters, while efficient, also cause moisture problems. Moisture problems cause mold and destruction. Mold causes health problems. If you're going to use them, be sure (1) heat the entire house, (2) maintain a constant temperature, and (3) it helps if the walls are insulated. Moisture from the heaters will condense on any cold surface.
What the fuck would that be like, exactly? Perhaps 40% of my income going to taxes? Being spied upon? Having my property subject to being seized to build a mini-mall? Being detained randomly for no fucking reason. How about being carted away to detention on a military base and being denied counsel? Being told I can't choose what I put in my own fucking body? Being denied the ability to protect myself with a firearm? How about having federal agents show up at my doorstep with tanks and burn my fucking house down?
As of 2003, there were 111 million households in the US. And, as of 2002, 405 million acres of forest land, with another 402 million acres of unclassified Federal land.
So, that's 3.6 acres of forest per household, with possibly another 3.6 including Federal lands. But, keep in mind, Federal land is more than just forest, including desert, and is usually sub-par. And a large portion of US forest remaining is in Alaska -- not exactly near high population areas.
This could all be moot, of course, since heating costs vary with climate. But, at the least, it means the northeast, with the highest population density and high heating costs, is screwed (so much for New England self-sufficiency). The south will soon become overpopulated. Alaska is still the best $7.2 mil we've ever spent. And the midwest will be doing fine with grass pellets instead of wood:p
Wood or no wood, what makes you think you'll get a toothbrush? Oil is an external economic input and in that sense it has no substitution. Something will have to give. If your wood toothbrush costs more than a plastic one does today, you'll have to do without something else to get it.
This is a zero sum game. I wish more people understood that. While there may be technical substitutes for oil products such as plastics, there are no economic substitutes. Make no mistake: life will be worse when the oil is gone.
Less, actually. Heat pump efficiency is based on, iirc, the difference between room temperature and outside temperature. This difference is lower in the US, which makes heat pumps more efficient there.
Only 30% of the eligible population elected this government.
We don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic. To make politicians accountable, that's the first thing you have to realize.
You also have to realize that citizens of a republic have certain responsibilities. And I'm not talking about the patriotic bullshit that we're told by government schools, media, and other institutions. I'm talking about being an active, capable, independent member of political society. I'm talking about being able to withhold your vote if there are no candidates you agree with, if the only decision is between the lesser of two evils.
We're beyond government "ignoring the Constitution". We're beyond government "breaking the law". We're beyond government turning on it's own citizens. We're way into the realm of applied political science, here. So this is a crash course:
Politicians in the US are using the "anything we can get away with" method to screw us out of our freedoms, our property, and a large chunk of our labor. And they can do so because a large percentage of Americans aren't capable members of the republic. Many of us are dependent upon the empire. We have government jobs, government loans, government housing, business tax breaks, welfare, military pay, military benefits, social security. Each of these things is a chain that binds you to this government and anything it wants to do. As long as you are dependent upon government, this government will act like it owns you. It will tax you, find you work, feed you, house you, and when things get tough, it will send you to die in war. You are their nigger.
So if you and your family can't do that: if you can't live without government hand outs, if you can't eat without a government job and US money, if you can't heat your house without oil extracted at the point of a gun or coal strip-mined with the help of a court order, you are a slave already. You don't get to complain about how your master treats you. That's the first step: become a citizen deserving of freedoms. Be capable of asserting your independence. Take responsibility for being a member of the republic.
And the alternatives should be clear by now. As the president has said: it's us versus them. It's us, peaceful, freedom-loving individuals who are concerned for the future of America, versus them, lying, warmongering sycophants who are in it for themselves. It's those that build and create versus those that take and destroy. And here's how we'll win:
Stop voting. Don't register. Stop using US currency. Stop paying taxes.
Forget about protesting. Forget about democracy. Forget about "working within the system". That's all bullshit to keep idiots occupied. These four steps, taken on a massive scale, will bring down the US government faster than you can say "military coup". And it will do so peacefully, fairly, "democratically" even.
That's how you get your country back. But here's how you keep it:
If you find a politician you agree with, and you think he will win, get a written copy of what he plans to do. Get physical proof of all his political beliefs. Scrutinize it like a lawyer would. Don't fall for any vague crap. This is your contract. You are exchanging your vote, and your sovereignty, for this politician's word. Get it in writing.
Now, when you vote for the politician, and he wins, and he doesn't do what he said he would do, or does anything that is against the contract you have with him, sue him in court. Sue him for damages. Find co-plaintiffs. Demand to be relieved from your contract. Find another politician you can trust. Or, don't, and learn to live without government. But, most importantly, remember:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
restraint on media ownership rules that got us to this point
I agree that regulations on media ownership are a restriction on freedom. And, as a Libertarian, I believe they are wrong.
But I also recognize that the concept of "ownership" of the public airwaves, and public rights-of-way granted under eminent domain, and especially allowing such resources to be monopolized, is equally against the concepts of freedom and liberty and honest public discourse on which this country was founded.
Unfortunately, government bureaucracy only tends to grow. As the Libertarian party has learned, people don't vote for smaller government. And as conservative Republicans have learned, even when they do, they don't get it. So, in the US, the solution to wrong-headed public policy is even more wrong-headed public policy. In this case, the grant of private ownership of public property comes with restrictions on its use. It's not the best system, but it seems to be the easiest at the moment.
Exactly. I don't see why people think gold is so valuable. It's worthless. We're not going back to a gold standard. You can't do anything with gold. You can oxidize carbon monoxide, whoopdie-doo. No one should ever want to do that. Seriously. It's bling bling for dipshits, rappers and rich white men alike.
There are metals that are useful beyond their price: platinum, palladium, even silver. Gold isn't one of them. Personally, I'd invest in lead. We're going to be using a lot of that in the near future.
Imagine that 'the arrow of time' in the Universe, like gravity on Earth, is pretty much the same everywhere, yet also different everywhere relative to everywhere else. That means that the 'arrow of time' points in different directions in spacetime depending on where you are, so time has a geometry just like space has a geometry. The novel idea that there are an infinite number of time dimensions in the Universe revolutionizes gravitational theory and much of modern science with it.
This didn't seem to jive with the slashdot summary, so I thought I'd post it. I get the impression time is supposed to be *a* geometry, not a dimension, or even multiple dimensions. I'm thinking of time as something like gravity, since that's the analogy used. But I wonder what that means exactly.
Is there a time force? a particle? Since time seems to generally head in one direction, are we being drawn to something? If so, is it a local phenomenon? With enough energy, can we change directions and go towards something else? Is this how small particles can seemingly travel backwards in time?
Slashdot Mirror
Storing liquid CO2 is a stupid-ass idea. It will eventually be released into the atmosphere.
But, if, if you can separate out the carbon, you've found a way to sequester CO2. Of course, you've also discovered a perpetual motion machine, so I'm not holding my breath.
Recycling it is only a temporary solution. Given the amount we expel into the atmosphere versus the amount we actually require, very temporary.
The condensation run off from the window-unit air conditioners in my house generate about 100 liters every 24 hours.
First of all, I'm calling bullshit on this. Either you live in a swamp, or there's something wrong with your air conditioner. Buy a new one and save the world 1kWh/day instead of producing distilled water with electricity.
Secondly, you realize you're advocating air conditioning as a means of water purification for undeveloped nations? That's just goofy.
Then you say a "3 or 4 square meter" solar panel is "cheap to make". And, assuming such a thing would even run a single air conditioner, you'd need one for, say, every two African villagers. Let's say this contraption costs $2000, which is a conservative figure. To outfit 100 million Africans, you're talking about $100 billion. And then of course who knows how long the things will last and whether they will be immediately confiscated by warlords and diverted to people who are actually productive enough to afford solar panels.
So, by now we've gotten to the point where you've completely lost your mind. As further evidence, "with a lot less complexity... than a boiler-driven generator". Umm, okay.
Yeah, I like how the conspiracy nuts think Hydrogen is meant to keep us dependent on the oil companies. Hydrogen benefits the nuclear industry, because they can create it most efficiently at ridiculously high temperatures. Add in the carbon == bad crowd and what you get is a push by nuclear to beat out coal in replacing oil for transportation. The oil companies would love to see alcohol fuels, because they're basically just distribution channels nowadays anyways. "Big coal" would be happiest if everyone drove electric cars.
CO production as a route to synthetic fuels is an exciting, and likely, prospect. But, looking at your writeup on "carbon negative" energy production, I see the same problem I've seen myself -- that producing pure carbon yields little actual energy and no useful byproducts. And producing CO, via zinc refining or some other process, isn't really "carbon negative", because you're just going to sell that CO to somebody who will likely use it to produce CO2 at some point or recycle it in a closed system.
Regardless, that seems to be the current goal of the new energy economy -- to extract carbon from hydrocarbon fuels and bury it someplace. But we still haven't exactly figured out how to store H very well without C anyways. And, as you point out, pure C is still valuable for many processes. So we may be ahead of ourselves, or behind, depending on how you look at it.
You're absolutely right. The problem is, we don't know exactly what is sustainable. Hell, listen to most people, and we don't know exactly what quantity of external inputs such as oil and gas are being used to support our unsustainable lifestyles. That I can agree with. And it's a real problem.
But, here's what I don't get:
To have arts/literature/culture, we must have cities. That's the argument, right?
But cities are expensive. Cities are an emergent phenomenon. Most cities are not sustainable and probably shouldn't exist. If you look around your city, and don't see a plentiful natural resource that requires humans to exploit, such as a mine or a bay or a transportation hub, you don't really live in a city. You live in an artificial creation. You live in a housing addition. You live in a possible future death trap.
So, your argument seems to be that cities exist to produce art/literature/culture. But, in reality, cities exist for the same reasons piles of ants exist on dead insects. There is a nearby resource that people are willing to crowd together to exploit. The "artist" in this example would be the one ant that decides to sit down and eat instead of taking his share of dead insect back to the ant hole. If anything, art/literature/culture is a response to this unnatural crowding and/or abundance. And when the dead insect is gone, the city goes away too.
So, if for many cities, the "dead insect" is fossil fuels or increased production due to fossil fuels, why should we invest in cities? In 500 years, will our descendants look back and say "we don't have fuel or Mars colonies, but, dammit, our forebears gave us this art and literature and we're thankful!" ???
That post is 100% bullshit. Every figure you cite is wrong. Instead of correcting you, again, like others have done, you're just going on my foes list.
There are 8 acres of land for every person in the US. There is just about the same amount for every person in Africa. That figure includes each area's respective amounts of desert/mountains/grassland, which are surprisingly similar.
:p
And, while the US is dependent upon resources from all across the globe, 8 acres really is quite a bit when you think about it. On 8 acres, any American should be able to heat and cool a reasonably sized house, produce a reasonable amount of fuel for a small car, feed himself grains and vegetables and meats, produce all manner of household chemicals, and generally maintain a level of prosperity beyond that common in the US just a century ago.
All this can be done without a drop of oil or an ounce of coal.
So, in a sense, you're right. But, in another sense, you're still an asshole if you're driving a Hummer
How about a CNG Civic [honda.com] then?
How about then you're driving a coal-powered car in 20 years instead of ten?
Then buy a normal car.
You forgot "sign up for the Army Reserves" and/or "watch as 10% of your income is taken by the government and used to keep oil flowing from the middle east."
And, then, what do I do in 10 years? Buy a car that runs on coal?
Seriously, this should be modded up.
Anything can make sense if you look for the conspiracy angle.
Everyone knows the telecoms are in trouble. It's a conspiracy of the laws of physics that their little copper wires can't carry the bandwidth of a coax cable. They've been whining about "making investments" for years now. Usually, they whine in the direction of Washington, asking their regulators to allow them to engage in all sorts of product bundling and monopolistic tactics in order to "recoup their costs".
So, given that you're a cash-strapped regulated monopoly with a failing business model, how exactly would you convince the government, that lately has taken a greater interest in spying on its citizens, to help you out?
Perhaps you're looking at things in a narrow way. In the grand sense, GPL'd software is the content. One of the purposes of the DRM provisions in GPL 3 is to prevent hardware manufacturers from creating devices that effectively prevent you from using the content, GPL'd software, in the way it was intended:
The moon is great and all. It does, in the long run, in fact help things like sustainability. And I'm not sure about other reasons like H3. But I just don't think it's realistic anymore. Going to the moon will get us advances in rocketry, robotics, and solar panels. And, with NASA, the focus is always on doing things the best way regardless of cost. Does anybody really need more expensive robots and solar panels to make their lives better?
Perhaps we would get more out of sending a few people into the middle of the Pacific and keeping them there for a few years. Let's see how cheaply we can pull off something like that. Instead of expensive electronics, equip them with basic, indestructible technology. We'd get advances in cheap renewable energy, micro-manufacturing, more efficient farming, and affordable, reliable technologies to perform basic tasks like water purification and waste treatment. Perhaps even self-replicating machines would benefit.
I'd rather see research in giving people with nothing more than air, water, and sunlight a standard of living higher than subsistence than figuring out new ways of extracting water from moon dust and building solar panels that work in the arctic. But, like you, I'm probably in the minority here on Slashdot in that regard.
As for traffic lights, those are a special case, not white, and must be heavy-duty. But, that's beside the point:
LED lights for sale today are still less efficient than the average compact fluorescent, and nowhere near as efficient as fluorescent tubes, but these guys claim to have made a breakthrough. Perhaps LEDs that replace fluorescents could come soon after all.
Democrats, or courts nominated by Democrats, did most of the things mentioned in my previous post.
When the Democrats become corrupted
ha.
Get a small refrigerator and shop for only one or two days worth of meals. A smaller fridge is going to save on your electrical bill.
Actually, the small "dorm" refrigerators are so horribly built that they use about as much electricity as a normal sized fridge. The thing that will make a difference, though, is having a new fridge versus an older one. Same goes for old A/C units, don't bother with those.
Blue-flame heaters. Live in a home older than 30-40 yrs? You probably have enough air exchange to use a blue flame heater, which is 100% efficient. Screw the old furnace or even the new 93% unit, blue flame is 100% efficient and uses no electricity! We got one after a week-long ice storm and discovered it lowered our total natural gas bill by 40%.
Ventless heaters, while efficient, also cause moisture problems. Moisture problems cause mold and destruction. Mold causes health problems. If you're going to use them, be sure (1) heat the entire house, (2) maintain a constant temperature, and (3) it helps if the walls are insulated. Moisture from the heaters will condense on any cold surface.
we would live in a modern police state
What the fuck would that be like, exactly? Perhaps 40% of my income going to taxes? Being spied upon? Having my property subject to being seized to build a mini-mall? Being detained randomly for no fucking reason. How about being carted away to detention on a military base and being denied counsel? Being told I can't choose what I put in my own fucking body? Being denied the ability to protect myself with a firearm? How about having federal agents show up at my doorstep with tanks and burn my fucking house down?
Would that be a police state?
As of 2003, there were 111 million households in the US. And, as of 2002, 405 million acres of forest land, with another 402 million acres of unclassified Federal land.
:p
So, that's 3.6 acres of forest per household, with possibly another 3.6 including Federal lands. But, keep in mind, Federal land is more than just forest, including desert, and is usually sub-par. And a large portion of US forest remaining is in Alaska -- not exactly near high population areas.
This could all be moot, of course, since heating costs vary with climate. But, at the least, it means the northeast, with the highest population density and high heating costs, is screwed (so much for New England self-sufficiency). The south will soon become overpopulated. Alaska is still the best $7.2 mil we've ever spent. And the midwest will be doing fine with grass pellets instead of wood
Wood or no wood, what makes you think you'll get a toothbrush? Oil is an external economic input and in that sense it has no substitution. Something will have to give. If your wood toothbrush costs more than a plastic one does today, you'll have to do without something else to get it.
This is a zero sum game. I wish more people understood that. While there may be technical substitutes for oil products such as plastics, there are no economic substitutes. Make no mistake: life will be worse when the oil is gone.
Less, actually. Heat pump efficiency is based on, iirc, the difference between room temperature and outside temperature. This difference is lower in the US, which makes heat pumps more efficient there.
Only 30% of the eligible population elected this government.
We don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic. To make politicians accountable, that's the first thing you have to realize.
You also have to realize that citizens of a republic have certain responsibilities. And I'm not talking about the patriotic bullshit that we're told by government schools, media, and other institutions. I'm talking about being an active, capable, independent member of political society. I'm talking about being able to withhold your vote if there are no candidates you agree with, if the only decision is between the lesser of two evils.
We're beyond government "ignoring the Constitution". We're beyond government "breaking the law". We're beyond government turning on it's own citizens. We're way into the realm of applied political science, here. So this is a crash course:
Politicians in the US are using the "anything we can get away with" method to screw us out of our freedoms, our property, and a large chunk of our labor. And they can do so because a large percentage of Americans aren't capable members of the republic. Many of us are dependent upon the empire. We have government jobs, government loans, government housing, business tax breaks, welfare, military pay, military benefits, social security. Each of these things is a chain that binds you to this government and anything it wants to do. As long as you are dependent upon government, this government will act like it owns you. It will tax you, find you work, feed you, house you, and when things get tough, it will send you to die in war. You are their nigger.
So if you and your family can't do that: if you can't live without government hand outs, if you can't eat without a government job and US money, if you can't heat your house without oil extracted at the point of a gun or coal strip-mined with the help of a court order, you are a slave already. You don't get to complain about how your master treats you. That's the first step: become a citizen deserving of freedoms. Be capable of asserting your independence. Take responsibility for being a member of the republic.
And the alternatives should be clear by now. As the president has said: it's us versus them. It's us, peaceful, freedom-loving individuals who are concerned for the future of America, versus them, lying, warmongering sycophants who are in it for themselves. It's those that build and create versus those that take and destroy. And here's how we'll win:
Stop voting. Don't register. Stop using US currency. Stop paying taxes.
Forget about protesting. Forget about democracy. Forget about "working within the system". That's all bullshit to keep idiots occupied. These four steps, taken on a massive scale, will bring down the US government faster than you can say "military coup". And it will do so peacefully, fairly, "democratically" even.
That's how you get your country back. But here's how you keep it:
If you find a politician you agree with, and you think he will win, get a written copy of what he plans to do. Get physical proof of all his political beliefs. Scrutinize it like a lawyer would. Don't fall for any vague crap. This is your contract. You are exchanging your vote, and your sovereignty, for this politician's word. Get it in writing.
Now, when you vote for the politician, and he wins, and he doesn't do what he said he would do, or does anything that is against the contract you have with him, sue him in court. Sue him for damages. Find co-plaintiffs. Demand to be relieved from your contract. Find another politician you can trust. Or, don't, and learn to live without government. But, most importantly, remember:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
restraint on media ownership rules that got us to this point
I agree that regulations on media ownership are a restriction on freedom. And, as a Libertarian, I believe they are wrong.
But I also recognize that the concept of "ownership" of the public airwaves, and public rights-of-way granted under eminent domain, and especially allowing such resources to be monopolized, is equally against the concepts of freedom and liberty and honest public discourse on which this country was founded.
Unfortunately, government bureaucracy only tends to grow. As the Libertarian party has learned, people don't vote for smaller government. And as conservative Republicans have learned, even when they do, they don't get it. So, in the US, the solution to wrong-headed public policy is even more wrong-headed public policy. In this case, the grant of private ownership of public property comes with restrictions on its use. It's not the best system, but it seems to be the easiest at the moment.
Exactly. I don't see why people think gold is so valuable. It's worthless. We're not going back to a gold standard. You can't do anything with gold. You can oxidize carbon monoxide, whoopdie-doo. No one should ever want to do that. Seriously. It's bling bling for dipshits, rappers and rich white men alike.
There are metals that are useful beyond their price: platinum, palladium, even silver. Gold isn't one of them. Personally, I'd invest in lead. We're going to be using a lot of that in the near future.
Important blurb from the website:
Imagine that 'the arrow of time' in the Universe, like gravity on Earth, is pretty much the same everywhere, yet also different everywhere relative to everywhere else. That means that the 'arrow of time' points in different directions in spacetime depending on where you are, so time has a geometry just like space has a geometry. The novel idea that there are an infinite number of time dimensions in the Universe revolutionizes gravitational theory and much of modern science with it.
This didn't seem to jive with the slashdot summary, so I thought I'd post it. I get the impression time is supposed to be *a* geometry, not a dimension, or even multiple dimensions. I'm thinking of time as something like gravity, since that's the analogy used. But I wonder what that means exactly.
Is there a time force? a particle? Since time seems to generally head in one direction, are we being drawn to something? If so, is it a local phenomenon? With enough energy, can we change directions and go towards something else? Is this how small particles can seemingly travel backwards in time?