A sense of peace? Please share how you arrived there?
That little realization is really scary to me. I don't FEEL above average. Actually I feel I could be a hell of a lot smarter. My IQ is above 150, and I'm well educated. (It's not bragging from an "anonymous handle" is it?) Yet I feel dumb often.
Which makes me feel fairly hopeless to think about your 'realization'. There are many people under 100, marginally educated, who are: driving, voting, holding office, raising children, listening to Rush Limbaugh, purchasing firearms... OMG !! If I sometimes wonder if I'm properly qualified to do all those things...
Not to mention the loneliness.
Excuse me now I have to go purchase a small island and fortify it.
If a 130 million year old species of frog is so darn purple... wonder what other colors were around back then. Maybe a purple dinosaur isn't so far off. We always assume they were greenish. Hmmmm..
It would be interesting if they could find a 'purple' gene in that frog, and then look for the same gene elsewhere.. see what else might have been purple.
I'll drink to that. Grew 4 Habanero bushes this summer. Roasted my own sauce. Can eat the likes of Dave's Total Insanity, but prefer the flavor and heat level of a good homemade habanero sauce.
Although if I had to give up beer I don't know if I'd like the hot stuff quite as much. Goes together like popcorn and salt.:]
I need to be careful though, I'm not in my 20's anymore. Over time stuff that hot relaxes the muscles that close the bottom of your esophagus. So while it doesn't give you heartburn, it greatly increases your propensity to get heartburn from all the normal culprits. So now I have GERD. Beer + Habaneros + Prevacid = Party Time Yeeehaaa
I realize this is flame bait, but I'll bite anyway... Hops are bitter (and floral). Many of us love that. IPA, APA, and "Special Bitter" capitalize on this. But even your run-of-the-mill American fizz water beer still has hops in it.
That's not "bitter beer flavor", it's just "beer flavor". Your complaint sounds like somebody complaining that "all chocolate sucks because it has that sweet chocolote flavor, even special dark has enough of that sweet chocolate flavor, thus, I'll stick with sour-patch-kids."
Keystone and other beers that market "No Bitter Beer Flavor!" are truly just marketing "No Beer Flavor" or not much anyway, that's why they're considered dreck by those who actually like real beer.
Interesting, my uncle hates beer and has one whale sized sweet-tooth. I LOVE beer and hate just about all things sweet, except for caramel and jolly-ranchers, and rich dark chocolate, which all temper the sweet with strong bitter or sour notes. So based on this incredibly scientific poll of me and my uncle, I'm betting you're a choc-o-holic sweet-tooth who doesn't like beer, strong coffee, or fiery hot sauce at all.
In other words, like my uncle, you have the same palate as Mary Poppins. Hey nothing wrong with that. But please, DON'T BLAME THE BEER! Thanks.
Also, have you tried any Belgian Lambics? A fairly adulterated beer in most books, because it has little to no hops and lots of sweetness. You might really like it.
"The scientists found that the subthalamic nucleus is hyperactive because there are insufficient amounts of Sonic Hedgehog to adequately control its activity. "
It's hard to read this article without chuckling at the repeated insertion of the silly name into the medical jargon, but hey people, (researchers, journalists) if you're going to use such a ridiculous name, and use it repeatedly throughout the story....
Hey Sony, you want to make this device really useful?
Give it a nice 16" LCD and a battery pack and put it in a laptop form factor. We can't carry our TV's everywhere. It would be great to have the choice, hook it up to a TV and have it "just work" or unhook it and raise the LCD and have it "just work".
-"Is that a laptop?" -"No, it's the new PSX playstation from Sony. It's WONDERFUL! Virus free, hassle free, I can play games and watch and record DVD's anywhere. No drivers, no security updates, no crashes, no fuss. It just works. Boots up in 2 seconds too. I'm on my way to a PSX LAN party right now!
So now when I get my coffee from that darling teeny-bopper downstairs I'll be forced to see Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake VIDEOS on her shirts. Oh the pain.
Not insulted. Guess it could have been. The sky wasn't that dark though, and I looked for that, thought it was the obvious answer, could've missed a pinpoint, but I did look pretty hard and saw nothing but clear blank dusk. Wouldn't a turning plane light sort of grow from the side nearest me? This thing grew out very large from it's exact center. It was a little bit amber too. Light can play pretty neat tricks on the eyes, but this thing sure didn't seem like an airplane light. Guess I'll never know.
Reminds me of an event in my back yard about a month ago (in north eastern US):
I was looking for mars but found it on the opposite side of the sky from where it really was. This object didn't move, but grew very bright, brighter than the real mars a month ago. It grew extremely bright over the period of about 30 seconds. Maybe 5x the brightness and size of Mars's best showing this year. Then it quickly faded to nothing. Only thing I can think of is a meteor that was coming directly at me, as it didn't move at all, only grew and shrunk.
Unchallenged Master of None. And I love it that way. I can always hire or outsource when we do need an unchallenged Master. I get to be the one and only IT person at a small subsidiary to a large financial company. I lay out the budget, make all the decisions on purchasing, outsourcing, business recovery, etc. I do a lot of paperwork for compliance purposes which I kind of hate. I spend the rest of my time training users, acting as help desk, evaluating new products and tech, and trying to keep up with all the security alerts I get from the parent corp. It has been a wonderful position. I love being the "CIO" of a tiny company.
That was the way it used to be. Recently the parent company has taken it on themselves to pull ALL IT functions under one roof. Somebody thought it would be a Great Idea to have one group of people be all things to all business units and subsidiaries. Consolidate to save costs. What a novel idea. It has truly been a nightmare. What used to take literally 5 minutes now takes 2 weeks and requires 800 signatures. It's the most inefficient set up I can imagine. My users are forced to call a centralized help desk that is staffed by inexpensive entry-level folks that have no idea what we do, what apps we have installed, what our business model is, what constitutes a risk, etc. These people are fine, but imagine your company's help desk if they got calls from other companies in different industries. When calls get escalated we get a visit from an upper level Corporate IT person who either
A: doesn't get it anywhere close to right because they've never seen half of the software we use to do business, have not been made aware of the security model, and have never been told what functionality we need.
OR B: They swallow their pride and ask me, so then get it right but resent me for being king of my little pond.
This is true for most departments - their business systems needs are very different from each other.
So where we used to be a fast nimble outfit that took every advantage of current and emerging technologies to gain efficiencies and stay on top of the competition, now we are a slow, backward, bureaucracy driven, lawyer ridden, hack shop that can't load an MS Office template without 2 forms, a signature, a phone call, a ticket number, and a 5 day turnaround time.. And that's JUST for an Office template to print out mailing labels. You don't want to hear about adding forms to our web site or patching a SQL server, or (OMG!) upgrading apps on a desktop PC!
It's a total nightmare. We aren't saving any money. We're much less efficient. The entire dept. is beyond pulling their hair out. The parent corp's Holier-than-thou attitude leaves us with no hope. And just about anything I could do to rectify the situation is a violation of corporate policy.
I went from loving my job to hating it to the point where I'm sick to my stomach in less than 3 months. And it has nothing to do with the efficiency of workers and everything to do with incompetent power-hungry management whose main concerns are buzzword compliance, covering their asses, and of course short term stock prices over long term profitability.
I'm not used to being a bitter person so I'm putting my energies toward getting the heck out of Dodge.
I think most people understand that. The important point though is that if you ARE a dumbass, having an MCSE doesn't help, on the contrary, it just makes you that much more dangerous. And there's the problem. An MCSE should be treated, at MOST, like an A+ in Networking Methodologies 101 as taught at your school of choice. It should not be a job requirement. It should not make anybody go "Oh great, you can run our network then." It should only make folks say "That's nice that you're good at reading comprehension and regurgitation and are comfortable with taking multiple choice tests."
Having an MCSE doesn't make you a dumbass. Though framing the cert. and hanging it in your cube does. And so does listing it as a job requirement.
> site...is making the claim that I am somehow being unfair by living the way I do.
The site has absolutely nothing to do with fairness. It simply has to do with fact. I use about 14.6 acres because I work at it. That's the best I can do right now. It's a fact that not everybody can live like we do.
> If they have freedom, they too can achieve this standard of living.
Fairness aside, this would be the WORST thing that could happen to everybody. If everyone lived like we do the planet could not support it. Not even close. Again, it has nothing to do with fairness. It's just fact. Step outside the problem. The ideal solution would be to figure out ways that everyone can live with the standards we are accustomed to but do it SUSTAINABLY.
When everyone tries to achieve it, it will be supplied.
At the expense of what? To wave your dismissive hand and say future science will save us, or sustainability sounds like communism, is ignorant rationalization, not to mention just plain lazy. We need the rainforests and oceans full of fish and streams full of fresh water and microbes and tadpoles. We need flowers and grasses, bushes and trees in vast quantities to produce oxygen and consume CO2. We NEED those things. We need vast quantities of land dedicated to those things. The weather, the process of growth and death, decay and rebirth, all the actions and reactions that make this a living planet need all of those things.
It's called a biomass full of genetic diversity. Without it we end up in bubble cities tending bioreactors, recycling the biomass of our dead, and longing for the feel of rain. All this has nothing to do with fairness or how highly anybody regards the minds of animals. You sound like a teenager full of angst whining about the unfairness of it all. These are facts that don't care about me or you or any "ism" be it communism or capitalism or some brand new "ism" that comes along. The fact is that the earth simply can not sustain the current situation of the human population growing and consuming non-renewable resources at an ever-increasing rate. There simply are NOT 28.3 acres for everybody and politics and science show no signs of producing a magic wand which changes this fact. If anything it's getting worse. We are pursuing false starts (Kyoto) and chasing down blind alleys ("The Hydrogen Economy").
So do your best to live a sustainable, ecologically enlightened life, do your best to give science and politics as much time as possible to work on the problems, do your best to keep the earth as blue and green and alive as possible for as long as possible. Or don't. You have the liberty to choose. Let your grandchildren judge you, and decide if it was fair.
P.S. - I have a red pill for you, when you decide you're done with that blue one.
Sorry, I can only do Quick OR Diplomatic, I really can't do both. Again sorry. So here's quick:
The problems exist, you have just not studied them. No getting around that, it's just plain obvious from your statements.
Just one point to get you to start all over really.. the land that you "fly over" is largely a dustbowl. There are real problems with soil and water everywhere. Just because there's no house or barn or skyscraper on the land doesn't mean it's usable land that is not in use.
Afterwards, if you find your self rationalizing your position on the matter and deconstructing the test, chances are good that you just need a new position on the matter. It happens. I was (blissfully) in your exact same shoes a few years back. I guarantee you that if you really look into it deeply (deeply as in reading a lot and thinking the equivalent of 5 or 10 moves ahead in Chess.. cause and effect...) and objectively, constantly refusing to allow yourself to rationalize your current position, you'll discover that our problems aren't exaggerated at all, far from it. Do that and I guarantee that you will come to this inevitable conclusion.
> The best way to make sure something doesn't go extinct is to start eating it.
I really hope you were joking there. This is true of course, only on the most superficial and counter-indicative of levels. Play around with the food questions on the test above and see what results the changes make. Why?
"1 solar electric module: UNBREAKABLE EFFICIENT SHADOW PROTECTED AND LOW COST UL and CUL listed, NEW 20 year warranty."
Just imagine if a fraction of Uncle Sam's money that's being spent on hydrogen power research was used as incentives to builders and homeowners to use these shingles.
> 'But wait,' you say, 'those are part of a natural, balanced, eco-system.' What do you suppose we are? Animals? That's right.
Humans are not part of one natural, balanced eco-system. We are the only species on Earth that can and has become a significant part of every eco-system. We are the only species that has ever changed the face of the earth so drastically in under 200 years. (meteors aren't species)
"Did you know that over 90% of all species that have ever existed are extinct, due to 'natural' causes, before humans existed."
Since humans have only been on earth for less than 1% of its 4.54 Billion years I would expect that that MUST be true. If we killed off every living thing on the planet leaving only people and machines your statement would still have to be true. 4.54 billion years is a long time. So now that we know it must be true, what does that have to do with anything? According to your logic since we're animals then if we blight the soil, pave the forests, pollute the air, and end up living shoulder-to-shoulder on a steady diet of soylent green, that too is then a natural process of animals. Yes it sure is, but certainly it's not the one we're shooting for.
"I'll admit that often, while pursuing other goals, humanity has been irresponsible about pollution, but we all have to live here too."
Capitalism by definition and in practice, is the pursuit of profit. There's your goal. Protecting our environment under a system that discourages it at every turn, (e.g. it cuts into short-term profits to do things in an ecologically conscience and sustainable way,) is extremely difficult. You don't need to be evil to consume a vastly disproportionate amount of resources compared to just about everything that came before you on this earth (Since you like that comparison). You just need to be born into the system. The very best you can do is try to fight it, e.g. bike to work along a busy road, eat vegetarian, turn off lights, etc.
And when we're extinct I'm sure a zenobiologist from Vogon 3 will come down some day and conclude that "due to the insurmountable drive built into the human animals by their own evolutionary process to consume and breed as successfully as possible, they quickly reached the same fate as many such species throughout the galaxy, they outgrew their planet before they could get off of it."
> On the other hand, your typical techno-wannabe has a very fragile ego and would generally not be secure enough to even be seen flipping through one at the bookstore.
No kidding! I'll be getting my copy from Amazon.com thankyouverymuch.
Are you people out of your minds? Backpacking is ALL ABOUT hiking through the wilderness. That's why there's a place in your pack for a tent and sleeping bag. Bussing around town with a pack on, staying at Motel 6's is not really backpacking, although it is fun.
But the point here is that this country is AWESOME for wilderness backpacking.
You mention the world famous Australian nature-boy so I assume you're interested in hiking through some of the areas that cause us to sing "America the Beautiful".
Try any National Forest, google for the site that lists them all then hit the one that most strikes your fancy. The Redwoods come to mind.
The Grand Canyon on a Burro. The Grand Canyon is something you must see before you die.
Set out on snow shoes from Steamboat Springs or Breckenridge Colorado. The views are indescribable. The powdered snow is amazing and unique. The smells are intoxicating. Carry a travel sized fishing rod and enjoy fresh trout. Make your way through an old abandonded gold-rush ghost town complete with tumbleweeds. Then walk out across a frozen mountain lake for the best view of northern hemisphere stars I know of. Now that is backpacking.
Hike through the Smokey Mountains and see a mama black bear and her cubs (from a distance if you're smart), then head for white-water rafting in the Nantahala River Gorge. Get clean and eat a heart-stopping southern breakfast at a Bed & Breakfast while you're there and find out what "southern hospitality" really means.
If you're really adventurous head to Maine and hike some or all of the 100 mile wilderness. Stop at L.L. Bean for a geeks paradise of outdoor gear. Then head to the coast for historic lighthouses, lobster, whale watching, and see the amazing sheer granite cliffs meet the pounding waves. I'd do it in late summer and then hike down through New England in the fall when the leaves are changing. You won't believe it. It looks like God hired Salvador Dali to paint the trees. Then on to...
New York City, enough said there, you just have to see it, and man what a contrast to the rest of this post. From there you can take the train down into Pennsylvania Amish Country and/or on to Philladelphia... and on and on.
This country is AMAZING to backpack. I'm jealous of you.
Slashdot Mirror
A sense of peace? Please share how you arrived there?
That little realization is really scary to me. I don't FEEL above average. Actually I feel I could be a hell of a lot smarter. My IQ is above 150, and I'm well educated. (It's not bragging from an "anonymous handle" is it?) Yet I feel dumb often.
Which makes me feel fairly hopeless to think about your 'realization'. There are many people under 100, marginally educated, who are: driving, voting, holding office, raising children, listening to Rush Limbaugh, purchasing firearms... OMG !! If I sometimes wonder if I'm properly qualified to do all those things...
Not to mention the loneliness.
Excuse me now I have to go purchase a small island and fortify it.
...skimming large volumes of miscellaneous text to extract some sort of refined knowledge from it.
Dear Text Miners,
Please start here: http://slashdot.org
Thanks so much.
If a 130 million year old species of frog is so darn purple... wonder what other colors were around back then. Maybe a purple dinosaur isn't so far off. We always assume they were greenish. Hmmmm..
It would be interesting if they could find a 'purple' gene in that frog, and then look for the same gene elsewhere.. see what else might have been purple.
I'll drink to that. Grew 4 Habanero bushes this summer. Roasted my own sauce. Can eat the likes of Dave's Total Insanity, but prefer the flavor and heat level of a good homemade habanero sauce.
:]
Although if I had to give up beer I don't know if I'd like the hot stuff quite as much. Goes together like popcorn and salt.
I need to be careful though, I'm not in my 20's anymore. Over time stuff that hot relaxes the muscles that close the bottom of your esophagus. So while it doesn't give you heartburn, it greatly increases your propensity to get heartburn from all the normal culprits. So now I have GERD.
Beer + Habaneros + Prevacid = Party Time Yeeehaaa
I realize this is flame bait, but I'll bite anyway... Hops are bitter (and floral). Many of us love that. IPA, APA, and "Special Bitter" capitalize on this. But even your run-of-the-mill American fizz water beer still has hops in it.
That's not "bitter beer flavor", it's just "beer flavor". Your complaint sounds like somebody complaining that "all chocolate sucks because it has that sweet chocolote flavor, even special dark has enough of that sweet chocolate flavor, thus, I'll stick with sour-patch-kids."
Keystone and other beers that market "No Bitter Beer Flavor!" are truly just marketing "No Beer Flavor" or not much anyway, that's why they're considered dreck by those who actually like real beer.
Interesting, my uncle hates beer and has one whale sized sweet-tooth. I LOVE beer and hate just about all things sweet, except for caramel and jolly-ranchers, and rich dark chocolate, which all temper the sweet with strong bitter or sour notes. So based on this incredibly scientific poll of me and my uncle, I'm betting you're a choc-o-holic sweet-tooth who doesn't like beer, strong coffee, or fiery hot sauce at all.
In other words, like my uncle, you have the same palate as Mary Poppins. Hey nothing wrong with that. But please, DON'T BLAME THE BEER!
Thanks.
Also, have you tried any Belgian Lambics? A fairly adulterated beer in most books, because it has little to no hops and lots of sweetness. You might really like it.
"The scientists found that the subthalamic nucleus is hyperactive because there are insufficient amounts of Sonic Hedgehog to adequately control its activity. "
It's hard to read this article without chuckling at the repeated insertion of the silly name into the medical jargon, but hey people, (researchers, journalists) if you're going to use such a ridiculous name, and use it repeatedly throughout the story....
How about letting us in on the joke?
Hey Sony, you want to make this device really useful?
Give it a nice 16" LCD and a battery pack and put it in a laptop form factor. We can't carry our TV's everywhere. It would be great to have the choice, hook it up to a TV and have it "just work" or unhook it and raise the LCD and have it "just work".
-"Is that a laptop?"
-"No, it's the new PSX playstation from Sony. It's WONDERFUL! Virus free, hassle free, I can play games and watch and record DVD's anywhere. No drivers, no security updates, no crashes, no fuss. It just works. Boots up in 2 seconds too. I'm on my way to a PSX LAN party right now!
Wow, talk about a dirty hack.
At least your underwear would finally log some down time.
;]
So now when I get my coffee from that darling teeny-bopper downstairs I'll be forced to see Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake VIDEOS on her shirts. Oh the pain.
Well, at least that gives me an excuse to stare.
www.garble.com
Free Group Marriage licences for the first one thousand applicants to be married in space.
A Free Lunch for the 1st person to coin a new term and get others to grok it in space.
For encouraging colonization:
Free libertarian handbook for the 1st person to sleep over-night on the surface of the moon.
Free libertarian handbooks AND Free Lunches for the first 3 or more people to sleep over-night on the moon together.
And of course, a Clothing Optional Space Station should also win.
That's it! Looked just like the pics I found.
Thanks!
Not insulted. Guess it could have been. The sky wasn't that dark though, and I looked for that, thought it was the obvious answer, could've missed a pinpoint, but I did look pretty hard and saw nothing but clear blank dusk. Wouldn't a turning plane light sort of grow from the side nearest me? This thing grew out very large from it's exact center. It was a little bit amber too. Light can play pretty neat tricks on the eyes, but this thing sure didn't seem like an airplane light. Guess I'll never know.
Reminds me of an event in my back yard about a month ago (in north eastern US):
I was looking for mars but found it on the opposite side of the sky from where it really was. This object didn't move, but grew very bright, brighter than the real mars a month ago. It grew extremely bright over the period of about 30 seconds. Maybe 5x the brightness and size of Mars's best showing this year. Then it quickly faded to nothing. Only thing I can think of is a meteor that was coming directly at me, as it didn't move at all, only grew and shrunk.
I'd love to know what the heck it was.
Unchallenged Master of None. And I love it that way. I can always hire or outsource when we do need an unchallenged Master. I get to be the one and only IT person at a small subsidiary to a large financial company. I lay out the budget, make all the decisions on purchasing, outsourcing, business recovery, etc. I do a lot of paperwork for compliance purposes which I kind of hate. I spend the rest of my time training users, acting as help desk, evaluating new products and tech, and trying to keep up with all the security alerts I get from the parent corp. It has been a wonderful position. I love being the "CIO" of a tiny company.
That was the way it used to be. Recently the parent company has taken it on themselves to pull ALL IT functions under one roof. Somebody thought it would be a Great Idea to have one group of people be all things to all business units and subsidiaries. Consolidate to save costs. What a novel idea. It has truly been a nightmare. What used to take literally 5 minutes now takes 2 weeks and requires 800 signatures. It's the most inefficient set up I can imagine. My users are forced to call a centralized help desk that is staffed by inexpensive entry-level folks that have no idea what we do, what apps we have installed, what our business model is, what constitutes a risk, etc. These people are fine, but imagine your company's help desk if they got calls from other companies in different industries. When calls get escalated we get a visit from an upper level Corporate IT person who either
A: doesn't get it anywhere close to right because they've never seen half of the software we use to do business, have not been made aware of the security model, and have never been told what functionality we need.
OR B: They swallow their pride and ask me, so then get it right but resent me for being king of my little pond.
This is true for most departments - their business systems needs are very different from each other.
So where we used to be a fast nimble outfit that took every advantage of current and emerging technologies to gain efficiencies and stay on top of the competition, now we are a slow, backward, bureaucracy driven, lawyer ridden, hack shop that can't load an MS Office template without 2 forms, a signature, a phone call, a ticket number, and a 5 day turnaround time.. And that's JUST for an Office template to print out mailing labels. You don't want to hear about adding forms to our web site or patching a SQL server, or (OMG!) upgrading apps on a desktop PC!
It's a total nightmare. We aren't saving any money. We're much less efficient. The entire dept. is beyond pulling their hair out. The parent corp's Holier-than-thou attitude leaves us with no hope. And just about anything I could do to rectify the situation is a violation of corporate policy.
I went from loving my job to hating it to the point where I'm sick to my stomach in less than 3 months. And it has nothing to do with the efficiency of workers and everything to do with incompetent power-hungry management whose main concerns are buzzword compliance, covering their asses, and of course short term stock prices over long term profitability.
I'm not used to being a bitter person so I'm putting my energies toward getting the heck out of Dodge.
>doesn't make you a dumbass.
I think most people understand that. The important point though is that if you ARE a dumbass, having an MCSE doesn't help, on the contrary, it just makes you that much more dangerous. And there's the problem. An MCSE should be treated, at MOST, like an A+ in Networking Methodologies 101 as taught at your school of choice. It should not be a job requirement. It should not make anybody go "Oh great, you can run our network then." It should only make folks say "That's nice that you're good at reading comprehension and regurgitation and are comfortable with taking multiple choice tests."
Having an MCSE doesn't make you a dumbass. Though framing the cert. and hanging it in your cube does. And so does listing it as a job requirement.
and very timely:
Getting power from the moon.
More details at Space.com.
> site...is making the claim that I am somehow being unfair by living the way I do.
The site has absolutely nothing to do with fairness. It simply has to do with fact. I use about 14.6 acres because I work at it. That's the best I can do right now. It's a fact that not everybody can live like we do.
> If they have freedom, they too can achieve this standard of living.
Fairness aside, this would be the WORST thing that could happen to everybody. If everyone lived like we do the planet could not support it. Not even close. Again, it has nothing to do with fairness. It's just fact. Step outside the problem. The ideal solution would be to figure out ways that everyone can live with the standards we are accustomed to but do it SUSTAINABLY.
When everyone tries to achieve it, it will be supplied.
At the expense of what? To wave your dismissive hand and say future science will save us, or sustainability sounds like communism, is ignorant rationalization, not to mention just plain lazy. We need the rainforests and oceans full of fish and streams full of fresh water and microbes and tadpoles. We need flowers and grasses, bushes and trees in vast quantities to produce oxygen and consume CO2. We NEED those things. We need vast quantities of land dedicated to those things. The weather, the process of growth and death, decay and rebirth, all the actions and reactions that make this a living planet need all of those things.
It's called a biomass full of genetic diversity. Without it we end up in bubble cities tending bioreactors, recycling the biomass of our dead, and longing for the feel of rain. All this has nothing to do with fairness or how highly anybody regards the minds of animals. You sound like a teenager full of angst whining about the unfairness of it all. These are facts that don't care about me or you or any "ism" be it communism or capitalism or some brand new "ism" that comes along. The fact is that the earth simply can not sustain the current situation of the human population growing and consuming non-renewable resources at an ever-increasing rate. There simply are NOT 28.3 acres for everybody and politics and science show no signs of producing a magic wand which changes this fact. If anything it's getting worse. We are pursuing false starts (Kyoto) and chasing down blind alleys ("The Hydrogen Economy").
So do your best to live a sustainable, ecologically enlightened life, do your best to give science and politics as much time as possible to work on the problems, do your best to keep the earth as blue and green and alive as possible for as long as possible.
Or don't.
You have the liberty to choose.
Let your grandchildren judge you, and decide if it was fair.
P.S. - I have a red pill for you, when you decide you're done with that blue one.
Sorry, I can only do Quick OR Diplomatic, I really can't do both. Again sorry. So here's quick:
The problems exist, you have just not studied them.
No getting around that, it's just plain obvious from your statements.
Just one point to get you to start all over really.. the land that you "fly over" is largely a dustbowl. There are real problems with soil and water everywhere. Just because there's no house or barn or skyscraper on the land doesn't mean it's usable land that is not in use.
Click here and answer the 13 questions.
Afterwards, if you find your self rationalizing your position on the matter and deconstructing the test, chances are good that you just need a new position on the matter. It happens. I was (blissfully) in your exact same shoes a few years back. I guarantee you that if you really look into it deeply (deeply as in reading a lot and thinking the equivalent of 5 or 10 moves ahead in Chess.. cause and effect...) and objectively, constantly refusing to allow yourself to rationalize your current position, you'll discover that our problems aren't exaggerated at all, far from it. Do that and I guarantee that you will come to this inevitable conclusion.
> The best way to make sure something doesn't go extinct is to start eating it.
I really hope you were joking there. This is true of course, only on the most superficial and counter-indicative of levels. Play around with the food questions on the test above and see what results the changes make. Why?
Has come a long way...
"1 solar electric module: UNBREAKABLE EFFICIENT SHADOW PROTECTED AND LOW COST UL and CUL listed, NEW 20 year warranty."
Just imagine if a fraction of Uncle Sam's money that's being spent on hydrogen power research was used as incentives to builders and homeowners to use these shingles.
> 'But wait,' you say, 'those are part of a natural, balanced, eco-system.' What do you suppose we are? Animals? That's right.
Humans are not part of one natural, balanced eco-system. We are the only species on Earth that can and has become a significant part of every eco-system. We are the only species that has ever changed the face of the earth so drastically in under 200 years. (meteors aren't species)
"Did you know that over 90% of all species that have ever existed are extinct, due to 'natural' causes, before humans existed."
Since humans have only been on earth for less than 1% of its 4.54 Billion years I would expect that that MUST be true. If we killed off every living thing on the planet leaving only people and machines your statement would still have to be true. 4.54 billion years is a long time. So now that we know it must be true, what does that have to do with anything? According to your logic since we're animals then if we blight the soil, pave the forests, pollute the air, and end up living shoulder-to-shoulder on a steady diet of soylent green, that too is then a natural process of animals. Yes it sure is, but certainly it's not the one we're shooting for.
"I'll admit that often, while pursuing other goals, humanity has been irresponsible about pollution, but we all have to live here too."
Capitalism by definition and in practice, is the pursuit of profit. There's your goal. Protecting our environment under a system that discourages it at every turn, (e.g. it cuts into short-term profits to do things in an ecologically conscience and sustainable way,) is extremely difficult. You don't need to be evil to consume a vastly disproportionate amount of resources compared to just about everything that came before you on this earth (Since you like that comparison). You just need to be born into the system. The very best you can do is try to fight it, e.g. bike to work along a busy road, eat vegetarian, turn off lights, etc.
And when we're extinct I'm sure a zenobiologist from Vogon 3 will come down some day and conclude that "due to the insurmountable drive built into the human animals by their own evolutionary process to consume and breed as successfully as possible, they quickly reached the same fate as many such species throughout the galaxy, they outgrew their planet before they could get off of it."
Conquering nature is, by definition, suicide.
P.S. - Yes, we ate them.
So now we can ask...
how many times will this story be cloned on Slashdot?
> On the other hand, your typical techno-wannabe has a very fragile ego and would generally not be secure enough to even be seen flipping through one at the bookstore.
No kidding! I'll be getting my copy from Amazon.com thankyouverymuch.
Are you people out of your minds? Backpacking is ALL ABOUT hiking through the wilderness. That's why there's a place in your pack for a tent and sleeping bag. Bussing around town with a pack on, staying at Motel 6's is not really backpacking, although it is fun.
But the point here is that this country is AWESOME for wilderness backpacking.
You mention the world famous Australian nature-boy so I assume you're interested in hiking through some of the areas that cause us to sing "America the Beautiful".
Try any National Forest, google for the site that lists them all then hit the one that most strikes your fancy. The Redwoods come to mind.
The Grand Canyon on a Burro. The Grand Canyon is something you must see before you die.
Set out on snow shoes from Steamboat Springs or Breckenridge Colorado. The views are indescribable. The powdered snow is amazing and unique. The smells are intoxicating. Carry a travel sized fishing rod and enjoy fresh trout. Make your way through an old abandonded gold-rush ghost town complete with tumbleweeds. Then walk out across a frozen mountain lake for the best view of northern hemisphere stars I know of. Now that is backpacking.
Hike through the Smokey Mountains and see a mama black bear and her cubs (from a distance if you're smart), then head for white-water rafting in the Nantahala River Gorge. Get clean and eat a heart-stopping southern breakfast at a Bed & Breakfast while you're there and find out what "southern hospitality" really means.
If you're really adventurous head to Maine and hike some or all of the 100 mile wilderness. Stop at L.L. Bean for a geeks paradise of outdoor gear. Then head to the coast for historic lighthouses, lobster, whale watching, and see the amazing sheer granite cliffs meet the pounding waves. I'd do it in late summer and then hike down through New England in the fall when the leaves are changing. You won't believe it. It looks like God hired Salvador Dali to paint the trees. Then on to...
New York City, enough said there, you just have to see it, and man what a contrast to the rest of this post. From there you can take the train down into Pennsylvania Amish Country and/or on to Philladelphia... and on and on.
This country is AMAZING to backpack. I'm jealous of you.
Fidgeting burns calories.
It has definitely made a difference for me.