Is it me or is the Global Elite just getting lazy?
At least for the last 120 years they put some effort into hiding the fact that we are in fact all powerless pesants under the heel of an elite in which the law only serves said elite. At least we had the illusion of "equality, the rule of law, and freedom."
I for one an dissapointed in my ruling shadow government and would like to formally request that a new shadow government that plans to treat me like a pesant, rise up, over throw the existing elite, and establish a new global elite that will at least TRY and hide the fact there is a global elite that owns us, does as they please, and mearly offer us the illusion that laws apply to everyone equally.
This boils down to fiction vs. non-fiction games (if we dare try to wrap our minds around that).
Games are inheritly fiction. What Mr. Walker is purposing is far more significant then the sentence seems to imply. We are talking about the establishment of NON-FICTION video games.
Now just think about that for a minute. As far as I can tell there has never been a NON-FICTION video game.
Football is a non-fiction game as would just about any sport. But the reason is you are REALLY PLAYING IT as a game (versus say spectating.)
To make video games "realistic" is an oxymoron. It can never approach realistic because it is intangible. Better graphic and better simulation doesn't converge at realistic but rather at better fiction.
A non-fiction video game would have no "4th wall" to contend with. The closest concept to that would be.Hack in the sense that the characters and the game world would have to be aware of it's own nature. When a character dies their data is deleted, no rez so we can say that Diablo made in-roads to the idea of non-fiction gaming in the sense of Perma-death (which they were by no means the first to offer this) but to demand "realism" in a video game is to imply a non-fiction element to video games which, conceptually, has never been done (can it be done even?)
There was a movie not so long ago that showed the best example of non-fiction gaming in which a player took control of a real person, perhaps that is the only example of Non-fiction gaming.
Today's MRL Nugget:
Ashur Mai Koloko Wai = Piet Lemon for "We Walk In Another's Deam"
Ashur = The Whole, All of Us, We Mai = To Pass, To Move, To Walk Koloko = Not Ours, Others, Not Mine Wai = Deam, Thought, Imagination, Inner World of the Mind
"The Internet is not Private" "The Internet is not Private"
Why for God's sake have children become so stupid that they cannot comprehend that making threats on the Internet is no different then making them in a mall? The bathroom stall has a latch on it for "privacy" but yelling "I will kill everyone in this mall" is still gonna land you in jail for making threats.
Sterilize this moron so she cannot breed, we need to slow down the Idiocracy here pretty soon...
"The cost of goods is what the market will bear.." It cost that much because people will pay that much. Expectations are such that consumers are willing to pay more for non-essential "gadgets" in relation to "tools". A person will buy a $2000 dollar laptop but wouldn't dream of buying a $2000 push mower (outside of premium or elite marketing).
Perception of a product influences price. A battery for a laptop is "techie, electronic, computer related" while a battery for you kid's eleectric car is a "consumable, toy, non-essential" and a battery for a lawnmower is "utlility, get-it-done, tool" in perception.
Those perception influence product pricing. There is no conventional "miniturization" in Lithium batteries per say that you have to pay a higher costs to shrink the battery, it seems more driven by natural market dynamics.
Why is it I can stream 1500 MP3s ripped from 50+ CDs and in real-time do volume normalization but a TV network can't? This seems reasonable since they plan the programming days in advance.
Volume Normalization is practical, easy to implement, even in streaming content, and a resonable request.
Fundamental of Left Wing Thinking: People by nature are poor in judgement and inheritly evil and need a strong authority to keep their behavior in check, a.k.a "The Lord of the Flies" scenario.
Fundamental of Right Wing Thinking: People by nature are governed by self interest and by nature they engage in a capitalistic exchange of goods and services with a tendency for specialization and self advancement. Due to the need of that exchange are usually good natured enough to get along to at least do business with one another.
With a left leaning society guilt should not be suprise and is not "all the rage these days." Historically that ideology was prevalent from about 1450 AD to about midway through the 1600's AD dying out about 1/2 through the Renessance.
Guilt is an excellent way to exert control. Sin, in it's various forms, has always been a method by which a higher power (be it a God, Philosophy, or government) has leveraged control over other.
Day 1 you'll likely have to spend several hours scrubbing an executive's PDA to ensure that his wife doesn't find out he's banging two fo the gals in accounting and marketing. He'll then berate you on how slow and useless you are.
Day 2 you'll likely spend 4 hours in a vendor meeting listening to your boss and the sales rep talk about where they want to go golfing and setting up a "tech demo" in that city. He'll promptly buy whatever nonsense the sales rep is hawking with a wink and a "Happy Ending" to the deal.
Day 3 you'll sit in a meeting with senior management bitching about costs and how worthless the IT\MIS department is and how they need to outsource to cut costs.
Day 4 You'll either start drinking or smoking to cope with the sheer amount of bullshit.
Day 5 if your smart you quit, if you are an idiot you'll spend 10 years doing IT work then finally quit.
Day 6 You've joined the dumb-ass catagory and decided to stick with it. You'll be asked to set up a Squid proxy solution so a smarmy ass-hat of a manager can try and find reasons to fire the three people that actually work so her neice can get one of the three now vacant jobs. You'll spend hours pouring through log files after hours trying to find a single inapporpriate web site so they can fire some people.
Day 7 You'll notice there isn't a mention of a weekend. That is because you will be stuck in a telco-closet tone testing wires and labeling thousands of connections because the wiring contractors never labeled anything because it is one of the executives cousins business that got the job so at Christmas Mr. Exec get 1/2 the profits from the job in his stocking...
Only an idiot or someone into S&M gets into IT anymore. Go work at Burger King, the co-workers are nicer, the manager are at least honest when it comes to treating you like cattle, and there is better career advancement.
Otherwise get ready to be treated like a fucking pesant, at least that's the general feel here in MN.
Like American Auto, it's too big to fail. Very few MMOs to date have folded. AC2 and a few smaller ones but EQ is still strolling along. WoW, like EQ isn't a game, it is a setting, a mythology if you would.
WoW 1.0 may some day go offline but WoW 2.0 will be there. Nothing is preventing Verant from taking EQ1, rebuilding the game engine from the ground up and relaunching Everquest to a new generation. That is why certain toys are only advertised heavily every 21-25 years. Introduce it to a new generation. A 'reboot' if you would.
EQ is getting ready for a reboot I think, not a sequel, a reboot. Same for UO.
I consider MMOs not a new gaming addiction but mearly the 21st century version of fraternal societies. Rather then heading out for lodge night, people head out and raid. MMOs have simply filled the social gap that freemasons, knight of columbus, rotary club, etc. filled for 1950s. In short people 'hang out' in MMOs.
Two old Greek guys and three Romans are sitting at a bakery drinking coffee and eating kabobs when Socrates and Plato walk by discussing the nature of "The State".
The first old Greek guys comments to Socrates "You know I once read a book that said a soverign rules by divine mandate."
Socrates smacks him across the face and pisses in his coffee. "YOu have been modded -1 Offtopic.
His second friend gets up intent on beating the remaining piss out of Socrates but Plato does a "Solar Flare Tsunami" blast to his face.
The three remaining Romans go to Plato and ask, "Why did you do such horrible things when they mearly wanted to comment on "The State" and join your discussion?"
Socrates whispered in reply, "We were talking about the state of Mrs. Plato's assets, not the government and off-topic discussion must BE PUNISHED!"
Which at that point Socrates and Plato performed the fusion dance and obliterated Atlantis just to show how serious they were about moderating off-topic discussion when a passing Spartan kicked them both off a cliff stating, "This Is Not SPARTA!"
Nothing generates traffic and interest in a topic then a fight.
Recent events now confirm in my mind that we have raised an entire generation of adult children who have now degenerated science into the equivalent of a school yard chanting:
"FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!"
In order to get attention.
Since we have lost our marbles overall is this issue and reaction any more a suprise then ClimateGate?
We have been a victim of an generation or two that has been raised on advertisments and entertainment, instant gratification, and agenda driven science. We validate a theory and it is instantly a widely advertised solution or product to lock in investment and grant money rather then taking a thourough approach. Instant Gratification and marketing has polluted science. Shame on all parties. Science and technology, like most parts of society has fallen vicitm to the Idiocracy. This is the 'intellectual' version of the trial in the movie Idiocracy regardless of side.
It seems, in every aspect of life, we have become polarized and narrow minded because we are only interested in self gratification of our own conventions. We demand tolerance yet are intolerant of others. We demand acceptance but only for 'our side'. The behavior of IBM AND it's curent critics on the issue seems to have a root in this adult child crisis. Our mentality has degraded into the mentality of grade school children. I fear there is no solution as the reward structure we have created rewards the worst and punishes the best.
"CO2 isn't air pollution, CO, Hydrogen Sulfides, Sulfuric Acid, Mercury, Nitrogen oxides DO kill animals and more importantly Plants."
The definition of a pollutant is "a resource out of place". More importantly CO2 is what is turning the ocean acic (carbonic acid) this in turn threatens the very bottom of the global food chain (ie: plankton). Covering the earth with trees would help but it is still not enough to aborb our emmissions. Ironiclly many of the traditional pollutants that you mention form areosols and have a significant cooling effect.
You assume there isn't an organism that would thrive in a high acidic ocean that would supplant the low-acidic thrivers. The whole point of evolution and natural selection seems to be the sruvival of those organisms that adapt the quickest. So what is the problem? 50% of humanity dies? 80%? Once that happens the amount of man made pollution plunges and once again the biosphere adapts weeding out overpopulation. Study locusts, they haven't annihilated planetary vegitation but are more then capable of it. There are two schools of though, life is robust, or fragile. If you believe that life is fragile then nothing you can do can protect it one way or the other. If it is robust then it can self correct. Either way it would appear that only humans are worried about humans surviving, I doubt the polar bears give a shit if you or I die.
Once again we humans clinging to some abstract "norm" defined soley by a paultry 10,000 year history. No where does the planet have a tag that says Max Occupancy XYZ nor a Min Occupancy ABC. Has it ever occured that the problem isn't CO2, Acid Rain, etc... but rather a simple fundamental that the planet cannot support 6+ billion people. We want to cut emissions, vut back on beef, cut back on anything and everything EXCEPT human breeding.
Here is a solution to your environmental woes: Quite popping out 4-8 kids. 2 makes you population neutral, 1 makes you shrink. How about a tax credit to people that only have 1 kid and an even bigget tax credit to people that have none? That will do far more for C02 then all the political mumbo jumbo people throw around in the name of grant money.
ditto, I have little sympathy for idiots taking themselves out of the gene pool. If only we could sterilize felons as standard practice that would take care of a fair bit of the passing on of stupid.
"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void (no electrical charge yet?) and darkness (low\zero energy) was upon the face of the deep (singularity) and the spirit of God moved across the face of the water (volitile superfluid) and said "Let there be light" and there was light (Photon emmision begins) and God saw the light, and it was good. (Effect follows cause, time exists)"
The Heavens and the earth are not, as translations go, the place where dead people go nor the planet we are on. The earth in this reference is more then likely "solid stuff" matter with the heavens the space in which the solid stuff occupies. There choice in words through translations doesn't seem to imply that earth is Earth\Terra but more akin to Dirt, Ground, that which is beneath your feet.
"And God separated the light and darkness into day and night"
This effectively constructs the flow, the passage, of time at the most base of interpretation. You physicists could even say this is the point where matter-antimatter throw down or when at the point of singularity the 4 primary forces decouple giving us matter and energy. The "Let there be light" could easily have been the initial singularity coming into existence (assuming there was a beginning to the universe.)
"the firmament and the waters" From a geological standpoint the earliest ingredient for life as we know is water. Early in a planet's formation you would get liquids being deposited on surface. So far keeping in line with the order we expect. Density is now in play. solid planets and gas giants along with stars at this point.
Greeks knew of the primary 4 states of matter 2000+ years ago: "Fire (Plasma) Earth (Solid) Air (Gas) Water (Liquid)" Give the old folks some credit. Any damn fool rolling a rock down a hill can understand the passage of time and to speculate the concept of the arrow of time is simple for a baker watching bread rise.
Even the order life is created in tends to reflect our current assumptions on evolutionary paths. We go with ocean based life to mammals and end with humans. Darwin was hardly the first to suggest evolution. Even ancient Greeks made observations similar. Darwin mearly crossed the Ts and dotted the Is in the idea.
Lastly for those looking at the story of creation remember the translations say "The First Day, The Second Day, etc." They so far never imply "The Next Day" It's an inpspirational work, not a handbook for science.
Lastly, I am forever amused at the arrogance of modern society that somehow writes off the first 10,000 years of human history as a bunch of morons. They had a lot of sound ideas that took 2000+ years to come around. Nothing to say their superstitions don't have a sound origin in theory.
There were plently of people ahead of their time, don't discredit "supersition" as nonsense, some of it has turned out to be sound in principle even if lacking realistic footing.
Metaphors my friends. When talking to children, you use a language they can understand.
In 33 years I've met two teachers in my life. Being employed by a school, stuck in front of a class with a ciriculum doesn't make you a teacher, professor, or instructor; at best it makes you a baby sitter.
I have great sympathy for students today, they'll likely never know what it is like to have a teacher, a real teacher. This PowerPoint issue brings about a great point in the nature of teaching (or in most cases the lack of) and what it means to teach. Lecturing is not teaching. But my quote to my students comes to mind:
"I am the teacher. You are the student. It is my job to teach, your job to learn. It is not my job to learn the material for you. My job is to take the vast array of information you are to learn, package it, and hand it out and ensure you understand what is in the package. Your job is to take that package, unwrap it, and figure out how all the parts inside fit together. If you do not understand a part, I will explain it. I will not, however, explain how they fit together, that is what you are here to do. That is learning. If I tell you how those parts fit together, then you have learned nothing but the right answer to a question, that is memorization. You are not here to memorize information; books are a far superior method of recording information. Does anyone here not understand the difference?"
Ok for those that don't get that it's a play on the frequent bumpersticker:
"It's not the guns, it's the criminal stupid."
Until judges start holding people accountable for abusing the legal system this will continue. No law will ever be abuse proof. Until the Bar starts holding lawyers accountable for taking frivolous suits, this will continue.
There went my plan for consulting for HR departments by checking Facebook and Myspace profiles. Guess I am stuck snooping Slashdot accounts and news sites for $10 a person.
The Agression Gene made me do it! The booze made me do it! The drugs made me do it! The fact he\she was a two timing whore made me do it! The television made me do it! The video game made me do it! Society made me do it! The disturbing hentai tenticle monster movie with the school girls made me do it! Ron Jeremy made me do it! Rebecca Demorney and Tom Cruise in the mid 1980s classic Risky Business with soundtrack by Tangerine Dream made me do it (on a subway)!
The fact is: Americans no longer have the mental capacity to understand personal responsibility and personal accountability. I can only assume there must be a "personal responsibility" gene that has been weeded out of the gene pool; or the fact they removed any sense of personal accountablility, responsibility, and achivement from the education system and now those that grew up with that removed are acting in step with that concept (or lack thereof).
Nothing prevents the next president from revoking\backing out of a treaty.
Noting prevents the next congressional session from re-writing\repealing\altering existing law.
Nothing prevents a SCOTUS member from being removed from their position via an impeachment. Their life time tenure is contingent on "good behavior" and as such any high crime should apply including Treason, Sedition, Perjury, etc.
Anyone could levy a charge that signing secret Treaties with foreign powers is Treason, but that is a long shot at best.
If that is the case then we have already failed. Any number of bacteria could have survived on the rovers could now be contaminating the surface. With no known competition they could be flourishing. I see little that can be done to figure out what is now native bacteria (if any) and what was brought via the rovers.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it me or is the Global Elite just getting lazy?
At least for the last 120 years they put some effort into hiding the fact that we are in fact all powerless pesants under the heel of an elite in which the law only serves said elite. At least we had the illusion of "equality, the rule of law, and freedom."
I for one an dissapointed in my ruling shadow government and would like to formally request that a new shadow government that plans to treat me like a pesant, rise up, over throw the existing elite, and establish a new global elite that will at least TRY and hide the fact there is a global elite that owns us, does as they please, and mearly offer us the illusion that laws apply to everyone equally.
Ok so who has the torrent link to the docs!?
This boils down to fiction vs. non-fiction games (if we dare try to wrap our minds around that).
Games are inheritly fiction. What Mr. Walker is purposing is far more significant then the sentence seems to imply. We are talking about the establishment of NON-FICTION video games.
Now just think about that for a minute. As far as I can tell there has never been a NON-FICTION video game.
Football is a non-fiction game as would just about any sport. But the reason is you are REALLY PLAYING IT as a game (versus say spectating.)
To make video games "realistic" is an oxymoron. It can never approach realistic because it is intangible. Better graphic and better simulation doesn't converge at realistic but rather at better fiction.
A non-fiction video game would have no "4th wall" to contend with. The closest concept to that would be .Hack in the sense that the characters and the game world would have to be aware of it's own nature. When a character dies their data is deleted, no rez so we can say that Diablo made in-roads to the idea of non-fiction gaming in the sense of Perma-death (which they were by no means the first to offer this) but to demand "realism" in a video game is to imply a non-fiction element to video games which, conceptually, has never been done (can it be done even?)
There was a movie not so long ago that showed the best example of non-fiction gaming in which a player took control of a real person, perhaps that is the only example of Non-fiction gaming.
Today's MRL Nugget:
Ashur Mai Koloko Wai = Piet Lemon for "We Walk In Another's Deam"
Ashur = The Whole, All of Us, We
Mai = To Pass, To Move, To Walk
Koloko = Not Ours, Others, Not Mine
Wai = Deam, Thought, Imagination, Inner World of the Mind
How is a 29 yr old a "child"?
Their behavior.
Repeat after me:
"The Internet is not Private"
"The Internet is not Private"
Why for God's sake have children become so stupid that they cannot comprehend that making threats on the Internet is no different then making them in a mall? The bathroom stall has a latch on it for "privacy" but yelling "I will kill everyone in this mall" is still gonna land you in jail for making threats.
Sterilize this moron so she cannot breed, we need to slow down the Idiocracy here pretty soon...
"The cost of goods is what the market will bear.." It cost that much because people will pay that much. Expectations are such that consumers are willing to pay more for non-essential "gadgets" in relation to "tools". A person will buy a $2000 dollar laptop but wouldn't dream of buying a $2000 push mower (outside of premium or elite marketing).
Perception of a product influences price. A battery for a laptop is "techie, electronic, computer related" while a battery for you kid's eleectric car is a "consumable, toy, non-essential" and a battery for a lawnmower is "utlility, get-it-done, tool" in perception.
Those perception influence product pricing. There is no conventional "miniturization" in Lithium batteries per say that you have to pay a higher costs to shrink the battery, it seems more driven by natural market dynamics.
Why is it I can stream 1500 MP3s ripped from 50+ CDs and in real-time do volume normalization but a TV network can't? This seems reasonable since they plan the programming days in advance.
Volume Normalization is practical, easy to implement, even in streaming content, and a resonable request.
Fundamental of Left Wing Thinking:
People by nature are poor in judgement and inheritly evil and need a strong authority to keep their behavior in check, a.k.a "The Lord of the Flies" scenario.
Fundamental of Right Wing Thinking:
People by nature are governed by self interest and by nature they engage in a capitalistic exchange of goods and services with a tendency for specialization and self advancement. Due to the need of that exchange are usually good natured enough to get along to at least do business with one another.
With a left leaning society guilt should not be suprise and is not "all the rage these days." Historically that ideology was prevalent from about 1450 AD to about midway through the 1600's AD dying out about 1/2 through the Renessance.
Guilt is an excellent way to exert control. Sin, in it's various forms, has always been a method by which a higher power (be it a God, Philosophy, or government) has leveraged control over other.
Eve Online
Guild Wars
Day 1 you'll likely have to spend several hours scrubbing an executive's PDA to ensure that his wife doesn't find out he's banging two fo the gals in accounting and marketing. He'll then berate you on how slow and useless you are.
Day 2 you'll likely spend 4 hours in a vendor meeting listening to your boss and the sales rep talk about where they want to go golfing and setting up a "tech demo" in that city. He'll promptly buy whatever nonsense the sales rep is hawking with a wink and a "Happy Ending" to the deal.
Day 3 you'll sit in a meeting with senior management bitching about costs and how worthless the IT\MIS department is and how they need to outsource to cut costs.
Day 4 You'll either start drinking or smoking to cope with the sheer amount of bullshit.
Day 5 if your smart you quit, if you are an idiot you'll spend 10 years doing IT work then finally quit.
Day 6 You've joined the dumb-ass catagory and decided to stick with it. You'll be asked to set up a Squid proxy solution so a smarmy ass-hat of a manager can try and find reasons to fire the three people that actually work so her neice can get one of the three now vacant jobs. You'll spend hours pouring through log files after hours trying to find a single inapporpriate web site so they can fire some people.
Day 7 You'll notice there isn't a mention of a weekend. That is because you will be stuck in a telco-closet tone testing wires and labeling thousands of connections because the wiring contractors never labeled anything because it is one of the executives cousins business that got the job so at Christmas Mr. Exec get 1/2 the profits from the job in his stocking...
Only an idiot or someone into S&M gets into IT anymore. Go work at Burger King, the co-workers are nicer, the manager are at least honest when it comes to treating you like cattle, and there is better career advancement.
Otherwise get ready to be treated like a fucking pesant, at least that's the general feel here in MN.
EQ2 was a sequel vs. a reboot.
Why in God's green Earth would imply people on Slashdot are disporortionally less socially active?
Like American Auto, it's too big to fail. Very few MMOs to date have folded. AC2 and a few smaller ones but EQ is still strolling along. WoW, like EQ isn't a game, it is a setting, a mythology if you would.
WoW 1.0 may some day go offline but WoW 2.0 will be there. Nothing is preventing Verant from taking EQ1, rebuilding the game engine from the ground up and relaunching Everquest to a new generation. That is why certain toys are only advertised heavily every 21-25 years. Introduce it to a new generation. A 'reboot' if you would.
EQ is getting ready for a reboot I think, not a sequel, a reboot. Same for UO.
I consider MMOs not a new gaming addiction but mearly the 21st century version of fraternal societies. Rather then heading out for lodge night, people head out and raid. MMOs have simply filled the social gap that freemasons, knight of columbus, rotary club, etc. filled for 1950s. In short people 'hang out' in MMOs.
Two old Greek guys and three Romans are sitting at a bakery drinking coffee and eating kabobs when Socrates and Plato walk by discussing the nature of "The State".
The first old Greek guys comments to Socrates "You know I once read a book that said a soverign rules by divine mandate."
Socrates smacks him across the face and pisses in his coffee. "YOu have been modded -1 Offtopic.
His second friend gets up intent on beating the remaining piss out of Socrates but Plato does a "Solar Flare Tsunami" blast to his face.
The three remaining Romans go to Plato and ask, "Why did you do such horrible things when they mearly wanted to comment on "The State" and join your discussion?"
Socrates whispered in reply, "We were talking about the state of Mrs. Plato's assets, not the government and off-topic discussion must BE PUNISHED!"
Which at that point Socrates and Plato performed the fusion dance and obliterated Atlantis just to show how serious they were about moderating off-topic discussion when a passing Spartan kicked them both off a cliff stating, "This Is Not SPARTA!"
Fin
Am I the only one who, upon reading "Solar Flare Tsunami", said it in the delivery of some overpowered fighter yelling his attack out:
SOLAR FLARE TSUNAMI!
RAGING DEATH BLAST!
LINEAR TAX RATE!
SPINNING SIDE KICK!
HADOUKEN!
Nothing generates traffic and interest in a topic then a fight.
Recent events now confirm in my mind that we have raised an entire generation of adult children who have now degenerated science into the equivalent of a school yard chanting:
"FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!"
In order to get attention.
Since we have lost our marbles overall is this issue and reaction any more a suprise then ClimateGate?
We have been a victim of an generation or two that has been raised on advertisments and entertainment, instant gratification, and agenda driven science. We validate a theory and it is instantly a widely advertised solution or product to lock in investment and grant money rather then taking a thourough approach. Instant Gratification and marketing has polluted science. Shame on all parties. Science and technology, like most parts of society has fallen vicitm to the Idiocracy. This is the 'intellectual' version of the trial in the movie Idiocracy regardless of side.
It seems, in every aspect of life, we have become polarized and narrow minded because we are only interested in self gratification of our own conventions. We demand tolerance yet are intolerant of others. We demand acceptance but only for 'our side'. The behavior of IBM AND it's curent critics on the issue seems to have a root in this adult child crisis. Our mentality has degraded into the mentality of grade school children. I fear there is no solution as the reward structure we have created rewards the worst and punishes the best.
WHO IS JOHN GALT!?
"CO2 isn't air pollution, CO, Hydrogen Sulfides, Sulfuric Acid, Mercury, Nitrogen oxides DO kill animals and more importantly Plants."
The definition of a pollutant is "a resource out of place". More importantly CO2 is what is turning the ocean acic (carbonic acid) this in turn threatens the very bottom of the global food chain (ie: plankton). Covering the earth with trees would help but it is still not enough to aborb our emmissions. Ironiclly many of the traditional pollutants that you mention form areosols and have a significant cooling effect.
You assume there isn't an organism that would thrive in a high acidic ocean that would supplant the low-acidic thrivers. The whole point of evolution and natural selection seems to be the sruvival of those organisms that adapt the quickest. So what is the problem? 50% of humanity dies? 80%? Once that happens the amount of man made pollution plunges and once again the biosphere adapts weeding out overpopulation. Study locusts, they haven't annihilated planetary vegitation but are more then capable of it. There are two schools of though, life is robust, or fragile. If you believe that life is fragile then nothing you can do can protect it one way or the other. If it is robust then it can self correct. Either way it would appear that only humans are worried about humans surviving, I doubt the polar bears give a shit if you or I die.
Once again we humans clinging to some abstract "norm" defined soley by a paultry 10,000 year history. No where does the planet have a tag that says Max Occupancy XYZ nor a Min Occupancy ABC. Has it ever occured that the problem isn't CO2, Acid Rain, etc... but rather a simple fundamental that the planet cannot support 6+ billion people. We want to cut emissions, vut back on beef, cut back on anything and everything EXCEPT human breeding.
Here is a solution to your environmental woes: Quite popping out 4-8 kids. 2 makes you population neutral, 1 makes you shrink. How about a tax credit to people that only have 1 kid and an even bigget tax credit to people that have none? That will do far more for C02 then all the political mumbo jumbo people throw around in the name of grant money.
ditto, I have little sympathy for idiots taking themselves out of the gene pool. If only we could sterilize felons as standard practice that would take care of a fair bit of the passing on of stupid.
"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void (no electrical charge yet?) and darkness (low\zero energy) was upon the face of the deep (singularity) and the spirit of God moved across the face of the water (volitile superfluid) and said "Let there be light" and there was light (Photon emmision begins) and God saw the light, and it was good. (Effect follows cause, time exists)"
The Heavens and the earth are not, as translations go, the place where dead people go nor the planet we are on. The earth in this reference is more then likely "solid stuff" matter with the heavens the space in which the solid stuff occupies. There choice in words through translations doesn't seem to imply that earth is Earth\Terra but more akin to Dirt, Ground, that which is beneath your feet.
"And God separated the light and darkness into day and night"
This effectively constructs the flow, the passage, of time at the most base of interpretation. You physicists could even say this is the point where matter-antimatter throw down or when at the point of singularity the 4 primary forces decouple giving us matter and energy. The "Let there be light" could easily have been the initial singularity coming into existence (assuming there was a beginning to the universe.)
"the firmament and the waters"
From a geological standpoint the earliest ingredient for life as we know is water. Early in a planet's formation you would get liquids being deposited on surface. So far keeping in line with the order we expect. Density is now in play. solid planets and gas giants along with stars at this point.
Greeks knew of the primary 4 states of matter 2000+ years ago:
"Fire (Plasma) Earth (Solid) Air (Gas) Water (Liquid)" Give the old folks some credit. Any damn fool rolling a rock down a hill can understand the passage of time and to speculate the concept of the arrow of time is simple for a baker watching bread rise.
Even the order life is created in tends to reflect our current assumptions on evolutionary paths. We go with ocean based life to mammals and end with humans. Darwin was hardly the first to suggest evolution. Even ancient Greeks made observations similar. Darwin mearly crossed the Ts and dotted the Is in the idea.
Lastly for those looking at the story of creation remember the translations say "The First Day, The Second Day, etc." They so far never imply "The Next Day" It's an inpspirational work, not a handbook for science.
Lastly, I am forever amused at the arrogance of modern society that somehow writes off the first 10,000 years of human history as a bunch of morons. They had a lot of sound ideas that took 2000+ years to come around. Nothing to say their superstitions don't have a sound origin in theory.
There were plently of people ahead of their time, don't discredit "supersition" as nonsense, some of it has turned out to be sound in principle even if lacking realistic footing.
Metaphors my friends. When talking to children, you use a language they can understand.
In 33 years I've met two teachers in my life. Being employed by a school, stuck in front of a class with a ciriculum doesn't make you a teacher, professor, or instructor; at best it makes you a baby sitter.
I have great sympathy for students today, they'll likely never know what it is like to have a teacher, a real teacher. This PowerPoint issue brings about a great point in the nature of teaching (or in most cases the lack of) and what it means to teach. Lecturing is not teaching. But my quote to my students comes to mind:
"I am the teacher.
You are the student.
It is my job to teach, your job to learn.
It is not my job to learn the material for you.
My job is to take the vast array of information you are to learn, package it, and hand it out and ensure you understand what is in the package.
Your job is to take that package, unwrap it, and figure out how all the parts inside fit together. If you do not understand a part, I will explain it. I will not, however, explain how they fit together, that is what you are here to do. That is learning. If I tell you how those parts fit together, then you have learned nothing but the right answer to a question, that is memorization. You are not here to memorize information; books are a far superior method of recording information. Does anyone here not understand the difference?"
"It's not the law, it's the plaintiff stupid."
Ok for those that don't get that it's a play on the frequent bumpersticker:
"It's not the guns, it's the criminal stupid."
Until judges start holding people accountable for abusing the legal system this will continue. No law will ever be abuse proof. Until the Bar starts holding lawyers accountable for taking frivolous suits, this will continue.
The problem is the plaintiff not the law.
There went my plan for consulting for HR departments by checking Facebook and Myspace profiles. Guess I am stuck snooping Slashdot accounts and news sites for $10 a person.
The devil made me do it!
The made me do it!
The Agression Gene made me do it!
The booze made me do it!
The drugs made me do it!
The fact he\she was a two timing whore made me do it!
The television made me do it!
The video game made me do it!
Society made me do it!
The disturbing hentai tenticle monster movie with the school girls made me do it!
Ron Jeremy made me do it!
Rebecca Demorney and Tom Cruise in the mid 1980s classic Risky Business with soundtrack by Tangerine Dream made me do it (on a subway)!
The fact is: Americans no longer have the mental capacity to understand personal responsibility and personal accountability. I can only assume there must be a "personal responsibility" gene that has been weeded out of the gene pool; or the fact they removed any sense of personal accountablility, responsibility, and achivement from the education system and now those that grew up with that removed are acting in step with that concept (or lack thereof).
Nothing prevents the next president from revoking\backing out of a treaty.
Noting prevents the next congressional session from re-writing\repealing\altering existing law.
Nothing prevents a SCOTUS member from being removed from their position via an impeachment. Their life time tenure is contingent on "good behavior" and as such any high crime should apply including Treason, Sedition, Perjury, etc.
Anyone could levy a charge that signing secret Treaties with foreign powers is Treason, but that is a long shot at best.
If that is the case then we have already failed. Any number of bacteria could have survived on the rovers could now be contaminating the surface. With no known competition they could be flourishing. I see little that can be done to figure out what is now native bacteria (if any) and what was brought via the rovers.