"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
take older rust belt cities and remove the suburban sprawl surrounding them and prune them down to their urban core, and then you have a city layout from the days before the rise of the automobile
as gas prices continue to rise, urban development plans will favor this model of development: tightly clustered cities with good public transportation, surrounded by parkland. a much more humane and livable environment. places like phoenix and las vegas and houston, nothing more than giant sprawling suburbs really, will become inhospitable to affordable living while rust belt cities will develop a new cachet as nice places to live: condos and coops in refurbished historical buildings surrounded by healthy woodlands, with easy public transport or foot traffic to anywhere you want to and need to go
of course this cachet of "nice place to live" also has to imply some sort of job growth too, but as these rust belt cities shrink, they have ample opportunity to invest in emerging job sectors to bolster that sort of growth
then the choice between sitting in your car in a traffic jam on the freeway at $4/ gallon gasoline in 105 degree phoenix won't look as nice as walking the charming old refurbished downtowns of historic cities. these old cities have good bones, they just need to be pruned and invested a little in, and natural growth will take hold again
notice one city not mentioned as ripe for bulldozing: pittsburgh. yet pittsburgh is pretty much a poster child of a rust belt city. why? good planning for investing in future job sectors:
now compare pittsburgh's sober but cheerful outlook to the armageddeon-level job losses at work in the newer suburban sprawl cities that relied too much on overheated sectors like construction
detroit and flint and any other city heavily dependent on automobile manufacturing, alas, has a different story than pittsburgh. but this part of the larger picture at play here: the death of the automobile, the death of suburban sprawl, the return to small compact cities with a livable core surrounded by healthy woodland and with good public transportation
i for one welcome the death of the age of the automobile and the idiotic environmental damage of gas guzzling automobiles and space wasting burbs, and the inhumane anonymity of living in the isolating mcmansions and sitting in traffic jams, in areas of the country no one can survive in without artificial air conditioning
death to california
long live ohio
mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt
2. i am trolling when i say trolls trump academics on slashdot 3. therefore, the actual truth must be that academics trump trolls on slashdot 4. therefore, i must be offering the opinion of a learned academic when i say trolls trump academics 5. therefore, i must be a learned academic, and you must be a troll 6. therefore... i really should get back to work now
but since its been known about for awhile, you can't generate headlines and hysteria and funding with dire predictions. the effects are real and sobering with eutrophication, and deserve far more study and mitigation than the notion of rising CO2 levels in the oceans on the timescales involved, that's for sure
it often follows dire preconceptions and focuses on hysterical predictions in spite of obvious mitigating factors, most notably time scale, that dull real implications. if you sound the alarm bell, you get press and you get funding. if you say something like "more CO2 will increase the pH of the ocean, but at such a tiny amount over such a giant span of time, it doesn't make any sense to worry about it right now" then you won't make the slashdot front page. its "the emperor's new clothes" writ large. good science and good education is being done by climate researchers all over the globe... and also a pretty heavy dose of indoctrination and mythology making
i believe global warming is a real force and we need to do something about it. but i'm hard pressed to worry about corals disappearing in an acid ocean on any time scale that is supposed to mean something
if we are going to mitigate mankind's effects, we need to lose the hysteria
passion is all that really matters in this world. and when i say matters, i mean that literally: not that passion matters in terms of what is important to you or me, but that passion matters in terms of what ultimately decides the fate of us all
you don't win the game by choosing not to play it. you merely become irrelevant
but you cherry pick the reasons that support your tired cynicism
you have a prejudice, and you pick the reasons that support your prejudice, and you don't bother to examine alternate reasons, equally valid, and possibly arrive at alternate conclusions about what truly motivates nations and people in a dominant fashion
you are a propaganda victim. propaganda never lies. it merely traffics in half-truths: small bits and pieces of the overall puzzle, examined in isolation, to arrive at conclusions that are out of whack, but supported by "the truth"
you need to develop a wider perspective, consider deeper avenues of the context of situations you depend upon to support your mentality and opinions, and grow in intellectual honesty
because we are nowhere near an endgame on internet-related innovation
the whole field has a long way to go before the technology is mature, and opera could capitalize on all sorts of missteps by competitors, and has plenty of chance to change the game itself. of course this observation also applies to all other game players, and some that don't even exist yet
if the internet were railroads, the year is 1840, and we're still arguing about track gauge and still using steam engines
lots of history yet to be written folks. beware anyone in drama queen mode declaring the imminent end of anything. a few years ago, internet explorer looked like it was on an inevitable path to complete and permanent dominance. then what happened?
anyone who is certain of anything about what will happen in internet innovation is basically telling you they are ignorant. anyone truly wise on the subject matter knows enough to wait and see
i always decry the intellectual dishonesty of those who decry military action... against essentially military strongmen
plenty of them actually do care about the principles they say they speak for. their passion is real. but they are morons. because they haven't thought through the full implications of what they say they stand for. they actually wind up standing for positions which only serve to further the interests of forces in this world... which defile their principles
if you say you are against violence, you need to stand up to violent people. which of course paradoxically entails some sort of violence. but that really is not the same thing as the violence you are fight. violence taken in reaction to violence is not the same as violence taken in aggressive initiative
if a pacifist stand idly by while one man stabs another repeatedly, he is not really a pacifist. by his inaction and indifference, he furthers the cause of violence
to be a true pacifist, you need to take violent action against those who initiate violence on the innocent
a "pacifist" who takes no stand against any violence in this world is merely preserving the status quo of a violent world. a human conscience demands you take action against injust violent aggression. to not act against aggressors is some sort of weakness or cowardice which furthers aggression in this world, and is not true pacifism
the security council makes sure nothing ever actually useful gets done
if the security council were expanded to include more powers, like japan and brazil and india, AND action only required a MAJORITY of a vote, not unanimous, then we might actually be talking about a UN that actually matters in the world
but as it is, the un is just an expensive exercise in writing careful calibrated statements, watered down to offend no one, including often the criminals or sponsors of the criminals in geopolitical games
poeple will go to war even if there isn't one penny involved. motivation is not always economic. it could be ideological, theological, psychological, etc.
as long as human beings exist, someone somewhere will be trying to impose their beliefs on someone else. nothing will ever stop such people from continuously being reborn in every generation
it is a constant struggle to subdue those who would impose on you. thus, there will always be war
meanwhile, if our democracy IS destroyed, it will be destroyed by... drum roll please... gangs of fascist assholes with guns
get my point yet?
you have so much faith in a tool which is really your enemy
if our country faces a crisis in which our democracy is at risk and the foundational principles are threatened, assholes with guns will not be there protecting us. assholes with guns will be avidly chipping away at our bedrock principles
i view this as the enemy of peace, not the maintainer of it
a military technological development which leads to the inability of nations and states to maintain their integrity and borders seems like a good development to me
the world needs to move into a post-nationalistic world. so bring on the military technology which would destroy national integrity and borders. these are artificial constructs which render decisions based on tribalism and ethnocentrism. destroy all nations
if fascism overthrows our government, it will develop amongst bands of heavily armed antigovernment types first. nuts with guns in the woods do not protect us from fascism, they are soil in which fascism grows. i never understood why anyone believes assholes with guns in the woods are somehow protecting us from anything. they are the roots of fascism, not protection from it. anyone who reaches for a gun to protect their rights has a visceral instinct to will to power that is the same psychological root of fascism. meanwhile, the civilian exercise of democratic impulses is what will save us from such visceral instincts. not guns. you use words to maintain a democracy. military muscle, used by anyone, is the roots of our downfall, not our salvation. guns have no valid purpose in civilian life. anyone who thinks guns do have a valid purpose in civilian life don't even understand what civilian life is
1. stop people believing in something 2. stop people from having passions in their beliefs
war and love are permanent aspects of mankind, two sides of a coin. you can't have one without the other. both are immutable unavoidable implications of having passion in something. we will never stop waging war, or love, as long as we exist as a species
you are correct that the usa getting involved as a nation right now would definitely be poorly perceived
but there is nothing wrong with americans, or brazilians, or indians, or japanese, for that matter, as individuals, donating cpu cycles, donating money, and otherwise getting involved with iranian expats and iranian organizations
getting involved as an individual to fight for progressive change in another country has absolutely nothing to do with imperialism. its simple progressive agitation. an instinct, rightfully so, that does recognize national boundaries
sex selection in the situation of horribly debilitating sex-linked conditions
if someone is screened and is positive for a sex-linked condition, and they have a fetus of that sex, they should have every right to not have that child based on that fact. absolutely. agreed
but all other reasons are invalid
simply because there is no way to screen for the reasons. they are all whimsy. and even if the reason could be show to be perfectly harmless, it would be swamped by all the bad reasons that would result in skewed sex ratios
prove any of the following statements wrong, and you prove me wrong:
1. if allowed to choose the sex of their fetuses, most people would do so for whimsical reasons. seems absolutely true to me based on simple human behavior
2. whimsy and fancy follow shallow trends. again, seems absolutely undeniable. on shallow whimsical thinking, people act in herds
3. therefore, trends in whimsical thinking would result in sex choices trending in less boys or less girls in a given time period, skewing sex ratios. they wouldn't cancel out, they would result in waves of more boys or more girls in a given time period. for example: name choices for babies. this absolutely subject to faddishness and herd behavior and popularity. if people were allowed to choose sexes for faddish reasons, the same sort of popularity contest of shallow pointless ideas would result in more boys or more girls in any given time period
Slashdot Mirror
FTFA:
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
take older rust belt cities and remove the suburban sprawl surrounding them and prune them down to their urban core, and then you have a city layout from the days before the rise of the automobile
as gas prices continue to rise, urban development plans will favor this model of development: tightly clustered cities with good public transportation, surrounded by parkland. a much more humane and livable environment. places like phoenix and las vegas and houston, nothing more than giant sprawling suburbs really, will become inhospitable to affordable living while rust belt cities will develop a new cachet as nice places to live: condos and coops in refurbished historical buildings surrounded by healthy woodlands, with easy public transport or foot traffic to anywhere you want to and need to go
of course this cachet of "nice place to live" also has to imply some sort of job growth too, but as these rust belt cities shrink, they have ample opportunity to invest in emerging job sectors to bolster that sort of growth
then the choice between sitting in your car in a traffic jam on the freeway at $4/ gallon gasoline in 105 degree phoenix won't look as nice as walking the charming old refurbished downtowns of historic cities. these old cities have good bones, they just need to be pruned and invested a little in, and natural growth will take hold again
notice one city not mentioned as ripe for bulldozing: pittsburgh. yet pittsburgh is pretty much a poster child of a rust belt city. why? good planning for investing in future job sectors:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_612352.html
now compare pittsburgh's sober but cheerful outlook to the armageddeon-level job losses at work in the newer suburban sprawl cities that relied too much on overheated sectors like construction
detroit and flint and any other city heavily dependent on automobile manufacturing, alas, has a different story than pittsburgh. but this part of the larger picture at play here: the death of the automobile, the death of suburban sprawl, the return to small compact cities with a livable core surrounded by healthy woodland and with good public transportation
i for one welcome the death of the age of the automobile and the idiotic environmental damage of gas guzzling automobiles and space wasting burbs, and the inhumane anonymity of living in the isolating mcmansions and sitting in traffic jams, in areas of the country no one can survive in without artificial air conditioning
death to california
long live ohio
mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt
for the same reason: better quality of life
mark my words
1. i am a troll
logical conclusions:
2. i am trolling when i say trolls trump academics on slashdot
3. therefore, the actual truth must be that academics trump trolls on slashdot
4. therefore, i must be offering the opinion of a learned academic when i say trolls trump academics
5. therefore, i must be a learned academic, and you must be a troll
6. therefore... i really should get back to work now
that saying the obvious
1. is somehow educational
2. modifies my point in any way
eutrophication seems to be a much more worrisome human-created force than rising CO2 levels, at least when it comes to the health of ocean ecosystems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication
but since its been known about for awhile, you can't generate headlines and hysteria and funding with dire predictions. the effects are real and sobering with eutrophication, and deserve far more study and mitigation than the notion of rising CO2 levels in the oceans on the timescales involved, that's for sure
it often follows dire preconceptions and focuses on hysterical predictions in spite of obvious mitigating factors, most notably time scale, that dull real implications. if you sound the alarm bell, you get press and you get funding. if you say something like "more CO2 will increase the pH of the ocean, but at such a tiny amount over such a giant span of time, it doesn't make any sense to worry about it right now" then you won't make the slashdot front page. its "the emperor's new clothes" writ large. good science and good education is being done by climate researchers all over the globe... and also a pretty heavy dose of indoctrination and mythology making
i believe global warming is a real force and we need to do something about it. but i'm hard pressed to worry about corals disappearing in an acid ocean on any time scale that is supposed to mean something
if we are going to mitigate mankind's effects, we need to lose the hysteria
not stop it"
which i already knew and doesn't refute anything i said
durrrr
random trolls on slashdot always trump learned academics ;-)
the ocean is a sort of buffer solution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_solution
what is major component of this buffer? us. living critters and how they react to an increase in CO2
http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/CHEMISTRY/
which means the oceans will maintain their pH over a wide range of abuse and this notion of ocean acidification is hysteria
because it also means you cannot love
passion is all that really matters in this world. and when i say matters, i mean that literally: not that passion matters in terms of what is important to you or me, but that passion matters in terms of what ultimately decides the fate of us all
you don't win the game by choosing not to play it. you merely become irrelevant
but you cherry pick the reasons that support your tired cynicism
you have a prejudice, and you pick the reasons that support your prejudice, and you don't bother to examine alternate reasons, equally valid, and possibly arrive at alternate conclusions about what truly motivates nations and people in a dominant fashion
you are a propaganda victim. propaganda never lies. it merely traffics in half-truths: small bits and pieces of the overall puzzle, examined in isolation, to arrive at conclusions that are out of whack, but supported by "the truth"
you need to develop a wider perspective, consider deeper avenues of the context of situations you depend upon to support your mentality and opinions, and grow in intellectual honesty
but right now you are just a tired crackpot hack
why?
because we are nowhere near an endgame on internet-related innovation
the whole field has a long way to go before the technology is mature, and opera could capitalize on all sorts of missteps by competitors, and has plenty of chance to change the game itself. of course this observation also applies to all other game players, and some that don't even exist yet
if the internet were railroads, the year is 1840, and we're still arguing about track gauge and still using steam engines
lots of history yet to be written folks. beware anyone in drama queen mode declaring the imminent end of anything. a few years ago, internet explorer looked like it was on an inevitable path to complete and permanent dominance. then what happened?
anyone who is certain of anything about what will happen in internet innovation is basically telling you they are ignorant. anyone truly wise on the subject matter knows enough to wait and see
i always decry the intellectual dishonesty of those who decry military action... against essentially military strongmen
plenty of them actually do care about the principles they say they speak for. their passion is real. but they are morons. because they haven't thought through the full implications of what they say they stand for. they actually wind up standing for positions which only serve to further the interests of forces in this world... which defile their principles
if you say you are against violence, you need to stand up to violent people. which of course paradoxically entails some sort of violence. but that really is not the same thing as the violence you are fight. violence taken in reaction to violence is not the same as violence taken in aggressive initiative
if a pacifist stand idly by while one man stabs another repeatedly, he is not really a pacifist. by his inaction and indifference, he furthers the cause of violence
to be a true pacifist, you need to take violent action against those who initiate violence on the innocent
a "pacifist" who takes no stand against any violence in this world is merely preserving the status quo of a violent world. a human conscience demands you take action against injust violent aggression. to not act against aggressors is some sort of weakness or cowardice which furthers aggression in this world, and is not true pacifism
it basically comes down to: "don't care about anything, and you won't suffer"
oh, great fucking advice. as soon as i turn into a robot i'll be sure to become a buddhist
the security council makes sure nothing ever actually useful gets done
if the security council were expanded to include more powers, like japan and brazil and india, AND action only required a MAJORITY of a vote, not unanimous, then we might actually be talking about a UN that actually matters in the world
but as it is, the un is just an expensive exercise in writing careful calibrated statements, watered down to offend no one, including often the criminals or sponsors of the criminals in geopolitical games
poeple will go to war even if there isn't one penny involved. motivation is not always economic. it could be ideological, theological, psychological, etc.
with one of the plot points from terminator salvation
and it didn't even work in a fantasy movie
seems to me the iranian people are doing a better job of that right now than i ever could ;-)
perhaps you should learn something about exactly what, not i have been saying, but what the iranian people are now saying, no?
as long as human beings exist, someone somewhere will be trying to impose their beliefs on someone else. nothing will ever stop such people from continuously being reborn in every generation
it is a constant struggle to subdue those who would impose on you. thus, there will always be war
what's the fucking problem?
meanwhile, if our democracy IS destroyed, it will be destroyed by... drum roll please... gangs of fascist assholes with guns
get my point yet?
you have so much faith in a tool which is really your enemy
if our country faces a crisis in which our democracy is at risk and the foundational principles are threatened, assholes with guns will not be there protecting us. assholes with guns will be avidly chipping away at our bedrock principles
don't pull a tiananmen square and just start machine gunning everyone
that really worries me ;-(
i view this as the enemy of peace, not the maintainer of it
a military technological development which leads to the inability of nations and states to maintain their integrity and borders seems like a good development to me
the world needs to move into a post-nationalistic world. so bring on the military technology which would destroy national integrity and borders. these are artificial constructs which render decisions based on tribalism and ethnocentrism. destroy all nations
if fascism overthrows our government, it will develop amongst bands of heavily armed antigovernment types first. nuts with guns in the woods do not protect us from fascism, they are soil in which fascism grows. i never understood why anyone believes assholes with guns in the woods are somehow protecting us from anything. they are the roots of fascism, not protection from it. anyone who reaches for a gun to protect their rights has a visceral instinct to will to power that is the same psychological root of fascism. meanwhile, the civilian exercise of democratic impulses is what will save us from such visceral instincts. not guns. you use words to maintain a democracy. military muscle, used by anyone, is the roots of our downfall, not our salvation. guns have no valid purpose in civilian life. anyone who thinks guns do have a valid purpose in civilian life don't even understand what civilian life is
all you have to do is:
1. stop people believing in something
2. stop people from having passions in their beliefs
war and love are permanent aspects of mankind, two sides of a coin. you can't have one without the other. both are immutable unavoidable implications of having passion in something. we will never stop waging war, or love, as long as we exist as a species
you are correct that the usa getting involved as a nation right now would definitely be poorly perceived
but there is nothing wrong with americans, or brazilians, or indians, or japanese, for that matter, as individuals, donating cpu cycles, donating money, and otherwise getting involved with iranian expats and iranian organizations
getting involved as an individual to fight for progressive change in another country has absolutely nothing to do with imperialism. its simple progressive agitation. an instinct, rightfully so, that does recognize national boundaries
sex selection in the situation of horribly debilitating sex-linked conditions
if someone is screened and is positive for a sex-linked condition, and they have a fetus of that sex, they should have every right to not have that child based on that fact. absolutely. agreed
but all other reasons are invalid
simply because there is no way to screen for the reasons. they are all whimsy. and even if the reason could be show to be perfectly harmless, it would be swamped by all the bad reasons that would result in skewed sex ratios
prove any of the following statements wrong, and you prove me wrong:
1. if allowed to choose the sex of their fetuses, most people would do so for whimsical reasons. seems absolutely true to me based on simple human behavior
2. whimsy and fancy follow shallow trends. again, seems absolutely undeniable. on shallow whimsical thinking, people act in herds
3. therefore, trends in whimsical thinking would result in sex choices trending in less boys or less girls in a given time period, skewing sex ratios. they wouldn't cancel out, they would result in waves of more boys or more girls in a given time period. for example: name choices for babies. this absolutely subject to faddishness and herd behavior and popularity. if people were allowed to choose sexes for faddish reasons, the same sort of popularity contest of shallow pointless ideas would result in more boys or more girls in any given time period
do you see any flaw in my reasoning in 1, 2 or 3?