Most people, though, prefer even the most degraded urban life to peasant life. I don't know why because I haven't tried peasant life myself. However, look at the industrial revolution and the current Third World. They aren't all driven off the land. Millions of people go to the cities and live in slums because they prefer it to subsistence farming.
The real question is, how labor-intensive is organic farming carried out on a large scale? For small plots that fit between Swiss mountains, I can imagine it working a lot better than on a Kansas wheat farm.
Who is going to be out there doing the labor? How many more field workers does it take? Where are they going to come from?
The US does send food and a lot of it, too. Get the details here. MT = metric tons
Excerpt from one of the reports: "A major shipment of U.S.-donated relief food for the Southern Africa region arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on May 26. The U.S.-chartered vessel "Liberty Glory" carried the 33,230 MT of food commodities, valued at $13.3 million. The shipment included 16,940 MT of maize, beans, and vegetable oil for Malawi, valued at $8.9 million, and 8,500 MT for Zambia, worth $2.9 million. These commodities were quickly off-loaded for onward transport to Malawi and Zambia via truck and rail. The "Liberty Glory" is scheduled to arrive in Maputo, Mozambique on June 5-7 in order to deliver the remaining 9,890 MT of food, valued at $4.8 million, for use in Mozambique. In addition, USAID/FFP is in the process of procuring approximately 36,450 MT of additional emergency food commodities, worth $16 million."
- In principle of course it's perfectly awful, analogous to random strangers poking through your cabinets at home looking for whatever evidence they can find for hanky-panky.
- This doesn't mean it won't happen. Illegality depends on which laws are in force. Laws can be changed.
- If you give permission through a license, it's probably legal right now (I am not a lawyer).
- Taking money from your account and turning you in are both extremes. Erasing the data is more likely. Like someone coming in your garage, finding that Weed-Eater you borrowed last year, and taking it back without saying a word to you.
Sounds like the fringe environmentalist's dream--turn loose bugs to eat up all the petroleum and return us to the halcyon days of... Leaving aside the question of whether past cultures had enough good points to want to live in them, what is the immediate result of the petroleum disappearing?
Reintroduction of coal power on a tremendous scale. This means getting any coal there is by any means necessary--strip mining, drafting you for pick-axe work, whatever.
Refitting strategic vehicles (trucks for food) with wood-burning internal combustion engines, which doesn't sound possible but was done Europe during World War II
Immediate and near-total deforestation as the present-day population resorts to past-era technologies to keep warm and cook their food
The care needs to be taken in the other direction. Water means that Earth life can live there--for instance, bacteria of the Antarctic sort. If we want to know about Martian indigenous life, we need to not inadvertently release several hundred species of microbes on the planet, some of which might take hold and crowd out any existing forms.
Even if they didn't adapt and live, sorting out their chemical components from those of native forms would complicate research.
Sterilizing an entire spacecraft is no easy job in the first place, and it gets much more difficult when the contents include live human beings.
This is a first-class example of how named classes go only so far in describing reality. Apparently spherical gaseous objects in space occur in a variety of sizes. They can't be smaller than a certain size because the gas wouldn't have enough gravity to hold itself together.
Depending on how big it is, it may be cold, warmish, warm, hot or BINGO! it might have enough mass to start fusing.
This would be the boundary between "planet" and "star," but the slightly smaller than stellar ones still wouldn't be something you could imagine settling on.
I'd like to know more about the ones that are just above the brown dwarf level. Could something have terrestrial/Jovian style weather (wind, clouds, hurricanes) and also be fusing inside? That would be cool (hot).
Interviewer: What do you think World War Three will be fought with? Einstein: I don't know. But I can tell you what World War Four will be fought with. Interviewer: What? Einstein: Rocks.
You can build your own spectroscope and see the spectral lines in sunlight with: - Piece of diffraction grating, the non-aluminized, see-through kind - Box that toothpaste came in - Tape and office supplies
Cut a round 1-cm hole in one end of the long, squarish box. Tape the diffraction grating over it.
Cut a narrow slit, with an X-Acto or similar knife, in the other end.
Now go look at something that lights up by heating gas. This would be either the sun or a fluorescent light, or a mercury-vapor light, etc. Look through the end with the diffraction grating. Compare the sun with a fluorescent--That's one of the ways they can tell what's in a star without going there.
Here's how to build a bigger one with some links, but the toothpaste box one, you can carry around and impress your friends. (One way or the other.) Link from that page about a spectroscope made from an old CD.
This is reminiscent of this discussion about "releasing massive numbers of tsetse flies 'sterilized by a burst of radiation' into sub Saharan Africa" back in February.
Yes, this is good reading about this very issue. Go read it right now.
" '[Endless copyright would be the] worst psychic trauma the race has yet suffered.... There are eighty-eight notes....I do not know the figure for the maximum possible number of melodies-- too many variables-- but I am sure it is quite high. I am certain that it is not infinity..... Do you know what it is like to be a composer these days, Senator?' "
Yes, they need to be introduced to the fact that life is not a vale of roses, but not shocked into that knowledge.
Children need to be protected. That's why nature made them small. You think they couldn't grow up faster physically? Sure they could. Pigs do it in a year. We have a long childhood because we have to absorb so much knowledge and do it slowly.
It's wrong to expose little children to too much "reality". I read "Hiroshima" when I was 9... Bad idea. Children should GRADUALLY learn about the harsh realities, when they are able to absorb such knowledge without it leaving big skid marks in their consciousness.
Children who grow up in a sheltered environment (not "candy-coated" or faked up, but tempered to their ability to understand) have stronger personalities. This is counter-intuitive, because there's an idea around that the school of hard knocks makes you "strong," but it is not so.
Re, "The only purpose this new domain serves is to entice parents to let down their guard..."
Just like a playground. Many playgrounds, small parks intended just for children, were first established during the Progressive era about a hundred years ago to give children in densely populated cities a place to play besides the street.
You can still let your kids play in the street if you like, with you watching (or not). Or you can take them to the playground.
Using the internet with your supervision for a project -- Going downtown with you holding the child's hand, on your way to a specific event (shopping, public library, concert)
Surfing the net unsupervised -- Turning the child loose downtown (not necessarily a bad thing depending on the child and the part of town)
Limiting access to kids.us -- Taking the child to "Little Gym" or one of those indoor play parks, where you can leave them safely while you do something else.
From a non-lawyer. As I understand it, your work is copyrighted - Informally by having been written. Automatic copyright. - Informally, but legally, by putting Copyright (c) year by name. - Formally by sending $34 and a copy of the work to the Library of Congress copyright department.
When I was an ISP support tech, I found that people from these professions were hardest to work with: journalists, teachers, lawyers, psychologists. Preachers and writers were up there too. I took to calling these "the word-oriented professions." The most dreaded customers to deal with, other than the habitually furious, were schoolteachers. Public school or private made no difference.
In general, they had great difficulty comprehending even the most basic concepts such as the difference between the Windows desktop and the interior of a web browser window. (There was one exception, a coach at some local country school who had an excellent computer lab going from the sound of it.)
Teaching teachers about computers is already hard. Introducing the idea of a different kind of operating system would, I think, confuse most of them very much.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people, though, prefer even the most degraded urban life to peasant life. I don't know why because I haven't tried peasant life myself. However, look at the industrial revolution and the current Third World. They aren't all driven off the land. Millions of people go to the cities and live in slums because they prefer it to subsistence farming.
The real question is, how labor-intensive is organic farming carried out on a large scale? For small plots that fit between Swiss mountains, I can imagine it working a lot better than on a Kansas wheat farm.
Who is going to be out there doing the labor? How many more field workers does it take? Where are they going to come from?
The US does send food and a lot of it, too. Get the details here. MT = metric tons
Excerpt from one of the reports: "A major shipment of U.S.-donated relief food for the Southern Africa region arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on May 26. The U.S.-chartered vessel "Liberty Glory" carried the 33,230 MT of food commodities, valued at $13.3 million. The shipment included 16,940 MT of maize, beans, and vegetable oil for Malawi, valued at $8.9 million, and 8,500 MT for Zambia, worth $2.9 million. These commodities were quickly off-loaded for onward transport to Malawi and Zambia via truck and rail. The "Liberty Glory" is scheduled to arrive in Maputo, Mozambique on June 5-7 in order to deliver the remaining 9,890 MT of food, valued at $4.8 million, for use in Mozambique. In addition, USAID/FFP is in the process of procuring approximately 36,450 MT of additional emergency food commodities, worth $16 million."
This whole situation is so Thirty Years War it's not funny.
- In principle of course it's perfectly awful, analogous to random strangers poking through your cabinets at home looking for whatever evidence they can find for hanky-panky.
- This doesn't mean it won't happen. Illegality depends on which laws are in force. Laws can be changed.
- If you give permission through a license, it's probably legal right now (I am not a lawyer).
- Taking money from your account and turning you in are both extremes. Erasing the data is more likely. Like someone coming in your garage, finding that Weed-Eater you borrowed last year, and taking it back without saying a word to you.
As in: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/30/182821 0&mode=nested&tid=167
the part about Borland "in short, their license permitted them to search at any time any of your computers looking for stolen software"
er, I meant: ©bots (alphabetized under c-bot)
If these don't exist now, they will in short order. And, I can see a consortium of major copyrighted-material producers (software, music, video companies) joining forces. The license for anything you legitimately install/download/play from any one of these companies contains a clause that you will allow ©bots to access your system looking for unlicensed material from any consortium member.
"By installing the Software I agree to allow access to my information storage devices for the purposes of copyright protection only...."
Depending on type, they will, upon finding unlicensed copyrighted material in your system:
z_gringo said:
"...this 'music' may be about the same thing as the Emperor's new clothes..."
This and much more. New art forms have about the survival rate of baby spiders.
I am surprised that the phrase appeared so late in this discussion.
The care needs to be taken in the other direction. Water means that Earth life can live there--for instance, bacteria of the Antarctic sort. If we want to know about Martian indigenous life, we need to not inadvertently release several hundred species of microbes on the planet, some of which might take hold and crowd out any existing forms.
Even if they didn't adapt and live, sorting out their chemical components from those of native forms would complicate research.
Sterilizing an entire spacecraft is no easy job in the first place, and it gets much more difficult when the contents include live human beings.
Re, ...selenocysteine, which is also encoded for by a STOP codon ....
This sure sounds like a kluge. Who designed this system, anyway? They need to clean up their code.
look at the issue from two sides
have passionate feelings that each side is the correct one
... and your xNxP's already do this all the time without hardware or dope.
Pay no attention to what I said and listen to Cheshire Cat, who sounds like he knows
This is a first-class example of how named classes go only so far in describing reality. Apparently spherical gaseous objects in space occur in a variety of sizes. They can't be smaller than a certain size because the gas wouldn't have enough gravity to hold itself together.
Depending on how big it is, it may be cold, warmish, warm, hot or BINGO! it might have enough mass to start fusing.
This would be the boundary between "planet" and "star," but the slightly smaller than stellar ones still wouldn't be something you could imagine settling on.
I'd like to know more about the ones that are just above the brown dwarf level. Could something have terrestrial/Jovian style weather (wind, clouds, hurricanes) and also be fusing inside? That would be cool (hot).
Interviewer: What do you think World War Three will be fought with?
Einstein: I don't know. But I can tell you what World War Four will be fought with.
Interviewer: What?
Einstein: Rocks.
You can build your own spectroscope and see the spectral lines in sunlight with:
- Piece of diffraction grating, the non-aluminized, see-through kind
- Box that toothpaste came in
- Tape and office supplies
Cut a round 1-cm hole in one end of the long, squarish box. Tape the diffraction grating over it.
Cut a narrow slit, with an X-Acto or similar knife, in the other end.
Now go look at something that lights up by heating gas. This would be either the sun or a fluorescent light, or a mercury-vapor light, etc. Look through the end with the diffraction grating. Compare the sun with a fluorescent--That's one of the ways they can tell what's in a star without going there.
Here's how to build a bigger one with some links, but the toothpaste box one, you can carry around and impress your friends. (One way or the other.) Link from that page about a spectroscope made from an old CD.
This is reminiscent of this discussion about "releasing massive numbers of tsetse flies 'sterilized by a burst of radiation' into sub Saharan Africa" back in February.
"Melancholy Elephants." Available online at baen here.
Yes, this is good reading about this very issue. Go read it right now.
...I do not know the figure for the maximum possible number of melodies-- too many variables-- but I am sure it is quite high. I am certain that it is not infinity..... Do you know what it is like to be a composer these days, Senator?' "
" '[Endless copyright would be the] worst psychic trauma the race has yet suffered.... There are eighty-eight notes.
Yes, they need to be introduced to the fact that life is not a vale of roses, but not shocked into that knowledge.
Children need to be protected. That's why nature made them small. You think they couldn't grow up faster physically? Sure they could. Pigs do it in a year. We have a long childhood because we have to absorb so much knowledge and do it slowly.
It's wrong to expose little children to too much "reality". I read "Hiroshima" when I was 9... Bad idea. Children should GRADUALLY learn about the harsh realities, when they are able to absorb such knowledge without it leaving big skid marks in their consciousness.
Children who grow up in a sheltered environment (not "candy-coated" or faked up, but tempered to their ability to understand) have stronger personalities. This is counter-intuitive, because there's an idea around that the school of hard knocks makes you "strong," but it is not so.
Re, "The only purpose this new domain serves is to entice parents to let down their guard..."
Just like a playground. Many playgrounds, small parks intended just for children, were first established during the Progressive era about a hundred years ago to give children in densely populated cities a place to play besides the street.
You can still let your kids play in the street if you like, with you watching (or not). Or you can take them to the playground.
Using the internet with your supervision for a project -- Going downtown with you holding the child's hand, on your way to a specific event (shopping, public library, concert)
Surfing the net unsupervised -- Turning the child loose downtown (not necessarily a bad thing depending on the child and the part of town)
Limiting access to kids.us -- Taking the child to "Little Gym" or one of those indoor play parks, where you can leave them safely while you do something else.
From a non-lawyer. As I understand it, your work is copyrighted
- Informally by having been written. Automatic copyright.
- Informally, but legally, by putting Copyright (c) year by name.
- Formally by sending $34 and a copy of the work to the Library of Congress copyright department.
When I was an ISP support tech, I found that people from these professions were hardest to work with: journalists, teachers, lawyers, psychologists. Preachers and writers were up there too. I took to calling these "the word-oriented professions." The most dreaded customers to deal with, other than the habitually furious, were schoolteachers. Public school or private made no difference.
In general, they had great difficulty comprehending even the most basic concepts such as the difference between the Windows desktop and the interior of a web browser window. (There was one exception, a coach at some local country school who had an excellent computer lab going from the sound of it.)
Teaching teachers about computers is already hard. Introducing the idea of a different kind of operating system would, I think, confuse most of them very much.
This is the one and only type of lottery ticket I would ever buy.