a bunch of guys who made it to easter island by canoe
therefore, it is more likely that your understanding of what they did to get there is wrong, rather than the intelligence and wisdom and ability to read natural clues, that they obviously possessed to make it all the way to easter island under any scheme, random or otherwise
however, it is not beyond the foolhardy adventurer to say:
you know, if you go northeast, you hit my granddad's home island weiua in 50 clicks, and then if you go further northeast, you hit his grandfather's home island riiooa in 90 clicks, and of course beyond that, also northeast, notice that, is onamonaweia the great godfount in 70 clicks. so i bet if you go southwest for about 50 clicks, you're going to hit a new island, or at least a shallow sea fishing ground, like the one between weiua and riiooa. besides, where are all of those albatrosses flying who always head southwest from here? so anyone want to lend me a canoe?"
and that scenario is much more likely than some guy just sitting in the water and randomly paddling in a random direction. of course random chance works fine for finding new islands over long periods of time, as you note
it is just that your observation doesn't work for the guy who actually has to sit in the canoe and start paddling!
like most successful human endeavours it was probably a combination of well-informed prediction AND random chance
are famous for zealously guarding their egg clutches, unlike many other reptiles which just leave their eggs to fend on their own, or abandon them at least temporariliy to forage for food
not female crocodiles. they will starve themselves in order to maintain constant vigilance over their clutch
go into any swamp today, and try to approach an egg mound with a bunch of crocodile or alligator eggs. i promise you a warm reception from the local 12 foot female crocodilian;-)
a trait that will prove crucial to tipping the scales in your direction can emerge long before it actually serves its crucial role
lots of other things have to fall into place, such as a carnivorous prediliction for eggs, being especially tiny, fast, nocturnal, and crafty and smart, or for dinosaurs to "put all their eggs in one basket", pun intended, and prove to have such a horrible reproductive weakness exposed to the early mammals in such a way that the mammals do not as well have a weakness in their reproductive cycle the dinosaurs can exploit too (clumsy, weak, and especially small and helpless young fending for themselves, etc.). so it took time for the advantage to be fully taken advantage of. other traits needed to line up as well
but its probably no small coincidence that the only dinosaurs surviving today are birds, whose nests are above ground, or reptilians who bury their eggs, or guard them zealously, like crocodiles
its no great mystery. the idea of land bridges is silly. if people can reach samoa and new zealand and easter island on boats and rafts, why they need a land bridge to get to alaska from kamchatka or from lappland to iceland, then greenland, then ellesmere, is silly. you don't even need boats to do that, just pack ice. want to understand how the new world was populated?
looking at her picture, seeing her obvious genetic heritage, on iceland, should cue you in on the free flow of of northeast asian genes around the north pole for millenia
and of course this doesn't preclude the odd southeast asian gene influx from the occasional lucky maniac who made the trip to the south or central american west coast from easter island or hawaii
the real mystery is how people ever got to easter island, or any other highly isolated south pacific dot. you can head towards north or south america and be way off your intended course, and still make it there as long as you ar emoving very roughly in a general east west direction
but a dot in the south pacific? if one were given to random chance, that's a lot of wasted souls in outrigger canoes in watery graves. more likely, they simply followed subtle signs: fish migrations, or bird migrations, cloud formations over distant lands, guessing further outliers on island chains from deducing the general direction of mapping previously known chain islands. who knows? perhaps the colonizers of the south pacific used subtle well-observed natural clues we aren't even aware of anymore
parasites and disease don't generally lead to the extinction of their hosts, as you tend to go extinct yourself
after an initial population decimation, in which the hosts suffer, then the parasite/ disease suffers a dramatic population decrease. more resistant strains of host emerge, and then more benign strains of parasite disease emerge. the parasite/ disease can't afford to threaten its own existence by being too virulent and deadly
however, i am willing to bet we, us mammals, killed off the dinosaurs. nothing like a few little rodents chewing on the slowly reproducing eggs of nesting dinosaurs to decimate the population
in fact, the only surviving dinosaurs of the egg-chewing rodent crisis were the ones who could nest in trees, offering some protection from the ground dwelling egg chewers. of course, we call these dinosaurs birds today
a teenager could be more knowledgable and do a better job at a certain technology than a guy in his 30s
meanwhile, if you are talking acting, or steelworking, fields that are unionized, your set of methods is pretty standard and unchanging
what this means is that barriers to entry can be established, means to control who gets in and out of the workforce, seniority can take hold, and unionization becomes effective
unionization is not effective when who you are hiring for what is still such a fluid skillset in IT work. today's buzzword technology is tomorrow's joke
comparisons to associations such as in law or medicine are not applicable either, because again, these fields are ossified into pretty rigid standardizations of education and certification
no one is going to lecture the guy on intellectual property law who works in the field, and certainly not a nonlawyer. but a teenager could very much lecture a thirty year old on the properties and methods of a new toolset library
therefore, without any rigid system of seniority, unionization is frutless
which is kind fo good i guess. IT, at least until (if ever) its technology skillset hardens, is a pure meritocracy. and that will be reflected in payscale as well, so there is no need to unionize, just get very good very quick at the next big thing
you are going to be accused of all sorts of fearful bullshit, regardless of your real reason for getting involved
there is the propaganda reason the usa got involved, and the real reason the usa involved
for the usa in iraq, it was liberation, but really concern for oil supply
there is also another propaganda reason the usa got involved: the reason the usa got involved according to to anti-american morons (as opposed to pro-american morons, the only people who aren't morons are the ones who aren't blindly and rabidly pro or anti american)
there argument is the usa got into iraq for american imperialism. really? people believe that? that the usa is suddenly going to start colonizing iraq and turn it into a territory?
where you equate a basic human concern for the well-being for others with western imperialism
can a brazilian care about what goes on in thailand? can a nigerian? can a japanese? and if they get involved, are they being imperialist warmongers?
but if an american or a french cares about what goes on in thailand and gets involved, its automatic in your mind they are being imperialist warmongers?
why can't what motivates the nigerian who cares about what goes on in thailand and what motivates the french who cares about what goes on in thailand come from the same moral sense of human conscience?
why do you have to think western imperialism is all there is happening when someone gets involved? what is the source of this blindness on your part?
the problem is that you have a historical hangover. dude, its not 1848. you need to update your terminology and perspective. your perspective of the world is from a dead era
thailand has always been a free country. in fact, "thai" means free, it has never been colonized by western powers. so if the french or the american sent support ships to bangkok: this means they are going to turn thailand into a colony? you really believe that?
perhaps its the year 2008 and you need to update your idea of what motivates concern here
"somebody somewhere is suffering... so anyway, what about me?"
if you want to preserve rights and freedoms in this world, you go on the offensive, you take the fight to the regimes where they are being abused
if you play a defensive game, if you only worry about yourself, you will lose your rights and freedoms anyway, and furthermore, you don't deserve the rights and freedoms you worry about because of this self-concern
how can i say this?
because the rights and freedoms we are talking about here are aspects of higher morality, of a human conscience. part of a human conscience is concern for the well-being of others. these are not merely contemporaneous concerns: rights and freedoms and concern for the well-being of others, but dependent upon each other in order to exist: it is through concern for the well-being of others that you maintain and repair and extend the framework of rights and freedoms in this world
meanwhile, if you only care about yourself, how can you expect society to protect you? society protects you by you staying involved in society, and by society, i mean the world at large, not your own little nationalist fiefdom
which is all the story summary seems to care about
selfishness will lead to your loss of freedoms faster than anything happening in authoritarian regimes
in the story summary above "someone somewhere is suffering, anyway, how about me me me?" is the beginning of the downfall of your rights and freedoms. your selfishness indicates you don't deserve them
dominating everything in 1998. you should now worry about google dominating everything in 2008
shun chrome. i don't care if its the best thing since sliced bread. the problem is what it represents in terms of power and dominance in the hands of one company. that's bad for everyone
support firefox. let microsoft have the os, google have search, and firefox have the browser. keep a balance of power, or suffer under the boot of one company
partisans on the left, partisans on the right, nationalists of every nationality...
please shut the fuck up
the earth is our planet, and we must steward it
this applies to you on the left: a hands off attitude to mother gaia is complete bullshit in a world of 6 billion technologically inclined homo sapiens
this applies to you on the right: yes, human activity actually has an impact on our planet's climate, and yes, we must do something about it. we are sorry you are in denial on this subject. please learn to adapt to reality
furthermore, it does not matter who fucked up our environment, it simply matters that we must manage it, all of us. talking about blame is simply a desire to avoid responsibility. we all have the responsibility for our planet
we must must find ways to turn up the thermostat, we must find ways to turn down the thermostat, and then, we must actively do this. we have plenty of time to adjust and anticipate and counteradjust our manipulations. the scaremongers wish to talk about run away processes, but we are very much in the middle of a fluid and forgiving climate model. no atmosphere would have survived this long on earth were it so fragile and susceptile to runaway change. millenia of abuse from volcanoes and sun cycles and life processes has proven our atmosphere to be quite rugged
but not invulnerable, and certainly totally indifferent to our well-being and our need to grow crops. the earth has no problem turning into tundra or desert. but we have a problem with that. so let us actively manage the atmosphere to stay within comfortable parameters. this is of course completely artificial. the natural evolution OR human-made greenhouse gases migth dictate that the atmosphere go to a hellish extreme at some point. who cares WHY it might drift to an uncomfortable fringe state, natural or man-made, are we to simply sit back and suffer and wait for things to get comfortable again in a couple of thousand years?
no. we are mankind. unlike other animals, we do not adapt to our environment. we wear clothes, build huts: we adapt our environment to us. in this way, we conquer the taiga, and conquer the sahara. therefore, we must begin to actively engineer and manage our atmosphere to our liking, to homo sapiens comfort level. which is, pretty much as the climate is right now globally. freeze the status quo for all eternity
who CARES who is to blame, if anyone. active management is simply what we must begin to do. obviously, this should be a world body, something attached to the un. meanwhile, if we simply sit around passing the buck, blaming something else, nothing gets done, and we all go to hell. literally, in the case of climate change
your genes left you with a diminished desire to carry on. ok. that simply means you don't carry on
and, following your line of reasoing, if your genes are represented in your family/relatives, this diminshed capacity to carry on will be reflected in low offspring output there as well, such that you and your genetic imprint will simply utterly fade from existence
enjoy extinction, you lose at the darwinian struggle. you are unfit
there are of course places in the world where polygamy is openly accepted, but in places where monogamy dominates publicly, everyone is polygamous in secret
and i am talking about men AND women. male polygamy gets more attention only because male polygamy is more public, male sexuality full of more bravado. women are just better at keeping secrets
and it makes perfect sense for men and women. men for for the obvious ability to spread more genes, and women for access to more resources, or simply to get better genes in secret than the genes of the publicly acknowledged mate (it has been speculated something like 10% of children before the era of genetic testing were raised by fathers who weren't really their genetic fathers)
i think that any gene that regulates vasopressin simply regulates how discrete or not discrete a male is going about being secretly or openly polygamous
there is just too much incentive, genetically, to spread your seed as wide as possible, no matter what
as i just downloaded ie8 this morning, and slashdot was the first page i navigated to (partly to see if the rendering artifacts of slashdot in ie7 were still an issue). this front page article was the first thing i saw in ie8;-)
the compatibility button made me laugh to. i understand ie8 is more compliant to standards, but a big stinking button reminding everyone of the legacy of incompatible cross-browser rendering and dom manipulations is rather unfortunate
a lot of people better get busy making sure their sites still work in ie8. there's a lot who will never hit that button to bring up legacy mode if your site doesn't work, they'll just go away
it is well recorded that even a solitary volcano blasts disrupts global climate (see krakatoa)
why is it so hard for you to imagine the effects of over 6 billion humans burning fossil fuels, knocking down forests, etc, and dumping ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
i expect from you a litany of quibbling details
all of which fall secondary to the fucking obvious:
the story seems to suggest we are all suffering because we don't get to retire at 65
i think that i would be bored out of my skull watching daytime tv, and would rather get a job
furthermore, working past traditional retirement is an indication not so much of an ailing economy as people living longer AND healthier lives
i myself don't think i'll ever retire. what is retirement? a chance to accelerate your cognitive decline? what is the point of retirement?
the mandatory retirement at 65 is not so much a disappearing luxury as it is a fossil of an earlier economic age, when most people worked manual labor. if i worked manual labor, indeed, retirement at 65 seems too late!
however, for those of us whose work is mostly cognitive in a modern economy, retirement is a nonissue
Slashdot Mirror
a bunch of guys who made it to easter island by canoe
therefore, it is more likely that your understanding of what they did to get there is wrong, rather than the intelligence and wisdom and ability to read natural clues, that they obviously possessed to make it all the way to easter island under any scheme, random or otherwise
mother nature provided something far worse to have nightmares about:
sarcosuchus imperator
the crocodile the size of a city bus
eek
however, it is not beyond the foolhardy adventurer to say:
and that scenario is much more likely than some guy just sitting in the water and randomly paddling in a random direction. of course random chance works fine for finding new islands over long periods of time, as you note
it is just that your observation doesn't work for the guy who actually has to sit in the canoe and start paddling!
like most successful human endeavours it was probably a combination of well-informed prediction AND random chance
are famous for zealously guarding their egg clutches, unlike many other reptiles which just leave their eggs to fend on their own, or abandon them at least temporariliy to forage for food
not female crocodiles. they will starve themselves in order to maintain constant vigilance over their clutch
go into any swamp today, and try to approach an egg mound with a bunch of crocodile or alligator eggs. i promise you a warm reception from the local 12 foot female crocodilian ;-)
a trait that will prove crucial to tipping the scales in your direction can emerge long before it actually serves its crucial role
lots of other things have to fall into place, such as a carnivorous prediliction for eggs, being especially tiny, fast, nocturnal, and crafty and smart, or for dinosaurs to "put all their eggs in one basket", pun intended, and prove to have such a horrible reproductive weakness exposed to the early mammals in such a way that the mammals do not as well have a weakness in their reproductive cycle the dinosaurs can exploit too (clumsy, weak, and especially small and helpless young fending for themselves, etc.). so it took time for the advantage to be fully taken advantage of. other traits needed to line up as well
but its probably no small coincidence that the only dinosaurs surviving today are birds, whose nests are above ground, or reptilians who bury their eggs, or guard them zealously, like crocodiles
its no great mystery. the idea of land bridges is silly. if people can reach samoa and new zealand and easter island on boats and rafts, why they need a land bridge to get to alaska from kamchatka or from lappland to iceland, then greenland, then ellesmere, is silly. you don't even need boats to do that, just pack ice. want to understand how the new world was populated?
just look at a picture of icelandic pop singer bjork
looking at her picture, seeing her obvious genetic heritage, on iceland, should cue you in on the free flow of of northeast asian genes around the north pole for millenia
and of course this doesn't preclude the odd southeast asian gene influx from the occasional lucky maniac who made the trip to the south or central american west coast from easter island or hawaii
the real mystery is how people ever got to easter island, or any other highly isolated south pacific dot. you can head towards north or south america and be way off your intended course, and still make it there as long as you ar emoving very roughly in a general east west direction
but a dot in the south pacific? if one were given to random chance, that's a lot of wasted souls in outrigger canoes in watery graves. more likely, they simply followed subtle signs: fish migrations, or bird migrations, cloud formations over distant lands, guessing further outliers on island chains from deducing the general direction of mapping previously known chain islands. who knows? perhaps the colonizers of the south pacific used subtle well-observed natural clues we aren't even aware of anymore
better said than I
placental mammals did not accept a gradually emerging of proof that live young is superior to egg laying
placental mammals actively highlighted the egg-layer's weak link in their reproductive cycle by literally eating their eggs to extinction
that's the best theory of dinosaur extinction
youMeanCamelCaseHungarianNotation?
parasites and disease don't generally lead to the extinction of their hosts, as you tend to go extinct yourself
after an initial population decimation, in which the hosts suffer, then the parasite/ disease suffers a dramatic population decrease. more resistant strains of host emerge, and then more benign strains of parasite disease emerge. the parasite/ disease can't afford to threaten its own existence by being too virulent and deadly
however, i am willing to bet we, us mammals, killed off the dinosaurs. nothing like a few little rodents chewing on the slowly reproducing eggs of nesting dinosaurs to decimate the population
in fact, the only surviving dinosaurs of the egg-chewing rodent crisis were the ones who could nest in trees, offering some protection from the ground dwelling egg chewers. of course, we call these dinosaurs birds today
a teenager could be more knowledgable and do a better job at a certain technology than a guy in his 30s
meanwhile, if you are talking acting, or steelworking, fields that are unionized, your set of methods is pretty standard and unchanging
what this means is that barriers to entry can be established, means to control who gets in and out of the workforce, seniority can take hold, and unionization becomes effective
unionization is not effective when who you are hiring for what is still such a fluid skillset in IT work. today's buzzword technology is tomorrow's joke
comparisons to associations such as in law or medicine are not applicable either, because again, these fields are ossified into pretty rigid standardizations of education and certification
no one is going to lecture the guy on intellectual property law who works in the field, and certainly not a nonlawyer. but a teenager could very much lecture a thirty year old on the properties and methods of a new toolset library
therefore, without any rigid system of seniority, unionization is frutless
which is kind fo good i guess. IT, at least until (if ever) its technology skillset hardens, is a pure meritocracy. and that will be reflected in payscale as well, so there is no need to unionize, just get very good very quick at the next big thing
it's still weird to me to hear that old nirvana song where they mention a magnetar in the context of lyrics about relationship issues
if we don't
all life choices are ebtween shades of grey
no life choices are between black and white
you lose something no matter what you do. the point is to figure out what path loses less. getting involved protects you more than becoming a hermit
you are going to be accused of all sorts of fearful bullshit, regardless of your real reason for getting involved
there is the propaganda reason the usa got involved, and the real reason the usa involved
for the usa in iraq, it was liberation, but really concern for oil supply
there is also another propaganda reason the usa got involved: the reason the usa got involved according to to anti-american morons (as opposed to pro-american morons, the only people who aren't morons are the ones who aren't blindly and rabidly pro or anti american)
there argument is the usa got into iraq for american imperialism. really? people believe that? that the usa is suddenly going to start colonizing iraq and turn it into a territory?
you really believe that?
where you equate a basic human concern for the well-being for others with western imperialism
can a brazilian care about what goes on in thailand? can a nigerian? can a japanese? and if they get involved, are they being imperialist warmongers?
but if an american or a french cares about what goes on in thailand and gets involved, its automatic in your mind they are being imperialist warmongers?
why can't what motivates the nigerian who cares about what goes on in thailand and what motivates the french who cares about what goes on in thailand come from the same moral sense of human conscience?
why do you have to think western imperialism is all there is happening when someone gets involved? what is the source of this blindness on your part?
the problem is that you have a historical hangover. dude, its not 1848. you need to update your terminology and perspective. your perspective of the world is from a dead era
thailand has always been a free country. in fact, "thai" means free, it has never been colonized by western powers. so if the french or the american sent support ships to bangkok: this means they are going to turn thailand into a colony? you really believe that?
perhaps its the year 2008 and you need to update your idea of what motivates concern here
you accuse me of mistaking shortsightedness for selfishness
ok, charge accepted
but at least i didn't mistake altruism for selfishness, antonymns:
"It is the individuals self interest to secure and protect the rights of others"
paraphrased: "it is selfish to be altruistic"
wtf?
i understand that selfish interest and altruism can go hand in hand, which is what you probably meant to say
but you are not allowed to equate contradictory terms and still think you are saying anything coherent
"somebody somewhere is suffering... so anyway, what about me?"
if you want to preserve rights and freedoms in this world, you go on the offensive, you take the fight to the regimes where they are being abused
if you play a defensive game, if you only worry about yourself, you will lose your rights and freedoms anyway, and furthermore, you don't deserve the rights and freedoms you worry about because of this self-concern
how can i say this?
because the rights and freedoms we are talking about here are aspects of higher morality, of a human conscience. part of a human conscience is concern for the well-being of others. these are not merely contemporaneous concerns: rights and freedoms and concern for the well-being of others, but dependent upon each other in order to exist: it is through concern for the well-being of others that you maintain and repair and extend the framework of rights and freedoms in this world
meanwhile, if you only care about yourself, how can you expect society to protect you? society protects you by you staying involved in society, and by society, i mean the world at large, not your own little nationalist fiefdom
which is all the story summary seems to care about
selfishness will lead to your loss of freedoms faster than anything happening in authoritarian regimes
in the story summary above "someone somewhere is suffering, anyway, how about me me me?" is the beginning of the downfall of your rights and freedoms. your selfishness indicates you don't deserve them
dominating everything in 1998. you should now worry about google dominating everything in 2008
shun chrome. i don't care if its the best thing since sliced bread. the problem is what it represents in terms of power and dominance in the hands of one company. that's bad for everyone
support firefox. let microsoft have the os, google have search, and firefox have the browser. keep a balance of power, or suffer under the boot of one company
partisans on the left, partisans on the right, nationalists of every nationality...
please shut the fuck up
the earth is our planet, and we must steward it
this applies to you on the left: a hands off attitude to mother gaia is complete bullshit in a world of 6 billion technologically inclined homo sapiens
this applies to you on the right: yes, human activity actually has an impact on our planet's climate, and yes, we must do something about it. we are sorry you are in denial on this subject. please learn to adapt to reality
furthermore, it does not matter who fucked up our environment, it simply matters that we must manage it, all of us. talking about blame is simply a desire to avoid responsibility. we all have the responsibility for our planet
we must must find ways to turn up the thermostat, we must find ways to turn down the thermostat, and then, we must actively do this. we have plenty of time to adjust and anticipate and counteradjust our manipulations. the scaremongers wish to talk about run away processes, but we are very much in the middle of a fluid and forgiving climate model. no atmosphere would have survived this long on earth were it so fragile and susceptile to runaway change. millenia of abuse from volcanoes and sun cycles and life processes has proven our atmosphere to be quite rugged
but not invulnerable, and certainly totally indifferent to our well-being and our need to grow crops. the earth has no problem turning into tundra or desert. but we have a problem with that. so let us actively manage the atmosphere to stay within comfortable parameters. this is of course completely artificial. the natural evolution OR human-made greenhouse gases migth dictate that the atmosphere go to a hellish extreme at some point. who cares WHY it might drift to an uncomfortable fringe state, natural or man-made, are we to simply sit back and suffer and wait for things to get comfortable again in a couple of thousand years?
no. we are mankind. unlike other animals, we do not adapt to our environment. we wear clothes, build huts: we adapt our environment to us. in this way, we conquer the taiga, and conquer the sahara. therefore, we must begin to actively engineer and manage our atmosphere to our liking, to homo sapiens comfort level. which is, pretty much as the climate is right now globally. freeze the status quo for all eternity
who CARES who is to blame, if anyone. active management is simply what we must begin to do. obviously, this should be a world body, something attached to the un. meanwhile, if we simply sit around passing the buck, blaming something else, nothing gets done, and we all go to hell. literally, in the case of climate change
like the nigerian 409 scams or the mystery shopper scams, they pray on people's own greed
if someone thinks they will get paid for handing over the keys to their website, they will do it
all good con jobs work precisely by exploiting humankind's dependable behavior of acting stupid when tempted by greed
you simply die off
your genes left you with a diminished desire to carry on. ok. that simply means you don't carry on
and, following your line of reasoing, if your genes are represented in your family/relatives, this diminshed capacity to carry on will be reflected in low offspring output there as well, such that you and your genetic imprint will simply utterly fade from existence
enjoy extinction, you lose at the darwinian struggle. you are unfit
monogamy in general seems to be a mirage
there are of course places in the world where polygamy is openly accepted, but in places where monogamy dominates publicly, everyone is polygamous in secret
and i am talking about men AND women. male polygamy gets more attention only because male polygamy is more public, male sexuality full of more bravado. women are just better at keeping secrets
and it makes perfect sense for men and women. men for for the obvious ability to spread more genes, and women for access to more resources, or simply to get better genes in secret than the genes of the publicly acknowledged mate (it has been speculated something like 10% of children before the era of genetic testing were raised by fathers who weren't really their genetic fathers)
i think that any gene that regulates vasopressin simply regulates how discrete or not discrete a male is going about being secretly or openly polygamous
there is just too much incentive, genetically, to spread your seed as wide as possible, no matter what
OMG army dudez machine gunnin college kids in tiananmen sq. pass it on bro BRB
as i just downloaded ie8 this morning, and slashdot was the first page i navigated to (partly to see if the rendering artifacts of slashdot in ie7 were still an issue). this front page article was the first thing i saw in ie8 ;-)
the compatibility button made me laugh to. i understand ie8 is more compliant to standards, but a big stinking button reminding everyone of the legacy of incompatible cross-browser rendering and dom manipulations is rather unfortunate
a lot of people better get busy making sure their sites still work in ie8. there's a lot who will never hit that button to bring up legacy mode if your site doesn't work, they'll just go away
it is well recorded that even a solitary volcano blasts disrupts global climate (see krakatoa)
why is it so hard for you to imagine the effects of over 6 billion humans burning fossil fuels, knocking down forests, etc, and dumping ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
i expect from you a litany of quibbling details
all of which fall secondary to the fucking obvious:
over 6 billion humans
slashing forest, burning fossil fuels
no effect at all in your mind?
hello?
the story seems to suggest we are all suffering because we don't get to retire at 65
i think that i would be bored out of my skull watching daytime tv, and would rather get a job
furthermore, working past traditional retirement is an indication not so much of an ailing economy as people living longer AND healthier lives
i myself don't think i'll ever retire. what is retirement? a chance to accelerate your cognitive decline? what is the point of retirement?
the mandatory retirement at 65 is not so much a disappearing luxury as it is a fossil of an earlier economic age, when most people worked manual labor. if i worked manual labor, indeed, retirement at 65 seems too late!
however, for those of us whose work is mostly cognitive in a modern economy, retirement is a nonissue