There are simply dozens of ways to address the frailty of the human body and the injuries we acquire as a function of living in a modern society filled with great big moving metal objects. The machines that convey us, so exceed the designs of being human its almost mind numbing. The fastest vehicles travel faster than Mach 20. The human body is designed to travel at distance at around at 5-10 mph and in short sprints at around 15 mph. You fall or bang into something going that fast and you will probably sprain or break something. Simply incredible.
The first thing we will do is augment externally. This is however crude and inelegant. Shortly after we will begin to seriously augmenting internally (actually these trends are already in place, there are plenty of implant for the human body today, but that number is soon to explode), and there will be significant overlap between the two. Next we will have control of our physiology at the genetic then molecular level with the advent of nanotechnology and our bodies will become artwork. Designs that will be interesting, unique, specific to a given need. This will be the beginning of true super humans, and the species with transform. Finally, as our augmented selves determine the best materials from which to build bodies and minds, we may well migrate from protein. Who's to say.
I hope you're not citing "Data" as an authoritative example of a mechanical life form. Think Asimo over at Honda. Can you say "Massive Maintenance!!!" So how do you power your machine? You have to eat something? You have to store energy. You have to eliminate waste products, every machine produces them. Your meat body is just an insanely complex machine with several hundred trillion moving parts, and its amazingly well designed. Able to get energy from abundant natural resources, convert that energy very efficiently into all kinds of interesting work. Its even capable of replicating itself and shuffling the genome to ensure genetic diversity. You over estimate the advantages of being a mechanical being. At least in anything resembling the near future.
Most of the things you're interested in having could be done with modifying the human body itself. Engineering the genome, augmentation, introduction of new technologies like nanotechnology when it arrives. You could ultimately build a body that is a super body in virtually every way.
The good news is that this is unsustainable and will ultimately collapse. A country that tries to protect its authority by blinding itself to the worlds advance, is operationally doomed. It might take a year, it might take a couple generations, but such a country can't compete at any level on a world market, and will have less and less to offer as one by one they deplete their natural resources.
The bad news is that before they fold, a lot of innocent people are going to suffer horribly. Sadly, the kinds of things one can do to try to remedy such a problem child are few, and will have limited impact.
The ugly part of this mess is the complex relationship between Russia, Belarus, and the rest of eastern and western Europe. Many of the complexities of oil trade and other less legal trade going in and coming out of Slavic countries are bolstering these dictatorial regimes. Its perhaps time to question any kind of trade with a nation that eat its own young.
Clearly your grasp of economics is as poor as your grasp of history. Here's an important bit of useful information. Look for the truth with an open mind. If you're simply cherry picking information to justify your point of view, you'll be doomed never to see what it actually so. Here's the hint, If you belong to one of those families of ideologues that continually submits some variation of the same old rehashed piece of ideological tripe, whose origin it is determined makes it of questionable value or veracity, then stop. You haven't justified your position, you just torpedoed it.
Give me ten similar but distinctly different thesis from renowned and reputable sources. That would be interesting and enlightening.
Communism and Capitalism are equally flawed by their very nature and for the same fundamental reason. They are human enterprises and left unchecked, human beings are arrogant, self obsessed, greedy, controlling, Machiavellian bustards who will gladly eat their own young and grind up their own parents for personal profit. If history tells us nothing, it tells us that power in the hands of a few is destined to precipitate the demise of many (including the original powerful few.) Either of these systems "COULD WORK" with the proper checks and balances, limits to personal power and some sane method for determining the wants and needs of the vast members of those societies so that those needs could be met effectively and ongoingly. Interestingly, modern technology makes either systems now more potentially workable than they were in the past.
What made America great was checks and balances. It made it possible for government to actually do the job of governing, because no one person could ever amass enough power to successfully hijack the entire system, so nobody even tried. Its only been over the last 30 years that business has had the means and the opportunity to plunder our government, by having laws restricting dangerous or unfair practices repealed, and in short shattering both the checks and balances and the Bill of Rights. The reason we are fine with China, is because we are quickly becoming a Fascist Totalitarian state, effectively meeting them in the middle. Recent laws passed or in the process of passing eliminate the cornerstones of American liberty and democracy. We are now a nation of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation. Because of this we have been watching an every growing succession of boom/bust cycles, each more devastating than the last. The signs are here now for all to see, they blaze like the noon day sun. Grotesque financial inequity. Absurd acts of greed and the wholesale raping of the middle class. An economic system so fragile it teeters on the edge of complete implosion. A world ravaged of natural resource and human dignity. Global policies ground not in benefit to human populations but benefit to global corporate interests. Businesses once served the nation to which they belong, now they suck their mother nations dry and bounce the proceeds around the world to manipulate tax and business advantage.
I fear this new fascist state far more than either constrained Capitalistic or Communistic systems. Its time to put the rods back in the reactor, and place strong constraints on economic and political systems before we all reap the coming catastrophe.
You might just want to holster that big fat ego for a moment. From a purely objective view, that shit cleaner risks his life to prevent outbreaks of typhus, disentery, and a whole raft of sanitation related horrors that have haunted humanity for thousands of years. He may have a nasty job, but you better believe its a critical and vital task.
You on the other hand spend your day scribbling on paper. Unless your research leads to the immediate end of disentery forever, my vote goes to the shit cleaner, because his work has an immediate and tremendously higher impact on my life than yours. Have you seen the per hour wage of a journeyman plumberv these days? Me thinks the only thing shitty here was your choice of example.
Now if you want to compare yourself to a divorce lawyer or maybe a member of The House, I would absolutely be willing to discuss that for the most part you do no harm, while these high paid idiots proceed to tear down our society. The fact that these men and women are almost certainly better paid than you, and often through means of questionable morality or legality, would add all kinds of new and interesting nuance and resonance to your question.
Perhaps you would do better to compare yourself against another who scribbles all day, a medical bureaucrat or maybe a lab technician? All useful jobs that contribute eh? It does beg the question what do you research? Clearly some lines of research will have greater worth to society than others. This is not to denigrate pure research, knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a noble thing, its simply that its immediate or obvious worth to society would tend the be more philosophical in nature. That's a very hard thing to take to the bank.
Actually I was more of the mind that teaching ethical behavior from preschool through to post graduate work would be a useful part of the future of being human. They used to teach ethics as part of a number of degree paths. Somehow, this ends justifies the mean, free fall to the lowest human common denominator has made all of us the poorer. Its time to teach our children that they have a responsibility to themselves and one another. That compassion and dignity aren't useless appendices to sliced off of the human condition, but fundamental ethical considerations that may well determine the worth and fate of humanity.
There's a famous story about a poor Scottish farmer who saved a boy from dying in a bog. The next day the boys Father, a wealthy Lord, came to the farmer and thanked him for his kind deed. In fact he said for saving my son's life, I give your son all the advantages of my wealth and position. The farmer's son went to the best schools and became a renowned Doctor. The Lord's son was Winston Churchill and the farmer' son was Dr. Alexander Flemming. When Winston Churchill came down with pneumonia, it was penicillin discovered by Flemming that saved him. How dramatically different might all our lives be today without the compassion and dignity shown by all of these men.
Its time for us to bring these conversations back to our society. These conversations used to be part of our religious teaching. As religion has receded in importance in American culture, it's time now to bring an ethical grounding that promotes doing the right thing for its own sake, to our society. Its time for our children to enjoy the benefits of a society inhabited by people who strive as much for the common good as personal self interest.
So at one level I can see your resentment. Its not fair to subsidize the irresponsible. My question is that when you see someone overweight coming out of a car in a handicapped parking place, do you even for one microsecond consider that their malady might be the reason for their obesity. I was in a car accident in 2002. I shattered my right leg, and had to have my right foot reattached. There is an 8 inch steel plate and over 2 dozen stainless steel screws in my ankle, leg and a 4 inch screw through my right knee where I suffered a plateau fracture of the right tibia, That is where the force of the impact is so great it splits the tibia down the middle like splitting a rail.
Before that, I'd won fitness awards. It was a long time I spent on my back, then a wheel chair, then crutches. I put on a lot of weight due to the sudden change in my lifestyle and the inability to stand on my bad leg. I'm only now (10 years later) at a point in my life where I think with the help of the right trainer/physical therapist I might be able to get myself back into shape. My leg however, will always hurt, and will never again function fully (unless the day comes that it can be replaced with a perfect working replica.) Do you see me as one of you lazy irresponsible fat bodies who doesn't deserve a placard?
Even when I get back down to my proper weight and fitness level, I will endure continuous pain and the inability to walk significant distances. You wouldn't be able to tell from a distance except perhaps by my slight limp or if you looked carefully you might notice something strange about the shape of my right ankle. Would you just assume I'm gaming the system, cheating you and the public in general. All I'm saying is rather than jumping to the worst conclusion immediately, perhaps you should stop for a second and ask yourself why that person has gotten a handicapped placard or license plate. Ultimately it takes a doctor to say a person needs it or not, though most doctors will lean towards the needs and want of the patient, a good doctor would almost certain say to a simply obese patient, get your fat ass to the furthest parking space and walk... its good for you. That is of course assuming they put their patient's well being ahead of looking good or making people happy. As well, you might just stop for a moment and wonder if an obese person would give up their placard in a heart beat to be fully healthy and vibrant again. I know I would.
Don't be so quick to judge, unless you've walked a mile on my crutches.
I don't know, the last couple years of his life, I think I could live with Steve getting a handicapped space. I've had a handicapped placard for over 10 years (after a major car accident.) I see people parking illegally all the time. Even when there is legal parking just a few spaces away. I'm lucky, I can walk a little ways (in spite of the severe pain.) There are many who are wheelchair bound who need the special large parking spaces to exit their vehicles. People who take those places because they are lazy or resent not those places not being used as often as regular space are arguing against showing the injured and handicapped special consideration in what amounts to one of the smallest possible ways. Its almost nothing to an able bodied person to walk a few yards more to a store entrance. For a number of handicapped people its the difference in being able to go to the store and not.
It wouldn't hurt the world to develop a miniscule amount of compassion and human dignity. Sadly our society as a whole has been remiss in instilling these qualities in our children today.
All of this is the predictable result of growing technology. Technology amplifies human intent. There are two great forces in the world. The first being the human desire to own, control, manipulate and squeeze to benefit me or us (focused self interest.) The other being to human need to create, advance, promote the greater good for all, collaborate and serve to benefit all. These are not intrinsically right or wrong, just different. Its when technology has amplified these ambitions in humanity to world shaking heights that we find ourselves at odds.
We must allow for artists to create new visions of what is possible closed or open. These creations however must sit inside of a world designed to serve all for the benefit of all. The greater good must dominate the worlds infrastructure. It is only in a context that serves all, that the more limited context of single self expression can flourish without destroying the very people for whom the creation should be serving. We need to make this a clear and public conversation, such that new creators can fully understand the repercussions of their choices and the ultimate value of their inventions. By making the total environment clear, and seeing how the many parts work inside the larger system, we can allow new players to choose positions that will server precise who they choose to serve.
With this breakthrough, it will now be possible to create high performance solar furnaces for the production of solar cells. literally taking petrochemicals out of the equation and using sunlight to capture sunlight for power. This is a groundbreaking shift towards a solar economy. The implications are revolutionary.
To date, the true cost of solar collection had to include the high cost in petroleum products to create the cells in the first place. This marks a new age of solar manufacture and will be most essential when humanity begins building on the Moon and Mars. The energy source in abundance in these new places will be solar. To the degree we perfect the production of solar energy over the next 20 years, we will have a profound foothold on other worlds in the inner solar system.
The problem has been a predictable result of Corporations railing against restriction and regulation. We put powerful rods in the reactor of capitalism when at the turn of the twentieth century a succession of economic disasters was precipitated by wholesale greed and financial practices that made a tiny few rich, but impoverished the masses.
We find ourselves learning the hard way, that we haven't changed in any significant way in 100 years, that greed is ultimately destructive and that our economic engines need exactly the same kind of checks and balances that our political engines require, because in the end, its all about the best and worst in being human. If you don't ensure stability, diversity and fair competition, you get boom-bust, profound disparity and a system which us ultimately unsustainable.
Corporations must be separated from government, for the benefit of both. Both must have a strong set of checks and balances (for example, corporations must not have the rights of human beings.) Both must have strong external guidance based on the greater good of society including environmental necessity, social responsibility and human dignity. A system of rewards and punishment must be implemented that moves these great forces in a direction that serves the needs of humanity and not the other way around.
The problem is a fundamentalist, puritanical desire to render retribution from prisoners instead of addressing the real underlying issues. The current system is disaster to the guilty it warehouses and an obscenity to the innocent people wrongly convicted. Its just easier to blame people, have public lynchings and dispose of the bodies, than actually look at the issues of organized crime, drug abuse, violence in our culture and what is quickly becoming a nation which criminalizes its poor. Growing studies show that there is no justice in the justice system. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas this year, with what amounts now to a mountain of evidence that he was innocent of any crime. Confronted with either looking soft on crime or doing the right thing, Governor Perry chose instead to have an innocent man executed. Capital punishment is the new coliseum. There isn't a single sane argument that supports capital punishment.
Prison's should be divided into those who can be rehabilitated and those that can't or shouldn't be. Both sides of the prison can do useful work, earn a wage that provides for their families, restitution to victims and pay their own cost of living. For those in the side supporting rehabilitation, giving them job skills and real life skills, that will serve them when they leave will dramatically reduce recidivism. Separating career criminals from young people who made a mistake, is a vital step in ending the criminal cycle. Keeping the most dangerous and violent offenders separate, and ensuring that they aren't in a position to do harm, will immediately enhance the security for both guards and inmates.
You absolutely need to check out the Khan Academy. Besides a very comprehensive grade school curriculum, the site has tools to support a teacher in finding out what students know and where they are having difficulty, so they can concentrate on helping a student where they need it most. As well, the Khan Academy has opened up public tutoring to give students the special support they need from people who've volunteered to teach. This is an amazing site and an incredible resource.
Don't feel bad. It just means we're responsible for becoming the extraterrestrials. We need to seed the universe with humanity (and as many other intelligent species as we can can help get liberated from this little mud ball.) There are countless fascinating environments in this solar system alone. Wealth and resources to beggar the imagination. With a commitment to space faring, we could have sustainable habitats all over the solar system in this century.
With the building materials available in the Asteroid Belt, Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, we could scatter sentience across the stars. We might master faster than light travel. We might not. We would certainly be able to ensure that whatever cataclysms that befell earth in the near or distant future, sentient life would continue to exist, and the earth's greatest gift to the universe would persist.
Maybe, one day, millions of years from now, when we fill the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy, and have found ways to utilize any kind of matter we come across to sustain ourselves, we will bump into another sentient life form. However, there will be no time when we are alone, because we will have each other.
For every person out there who "carelessly" over-spends and digs themselves into debt, then glibly declares bankruptcy, we have several thousand people out there who've seen virtually no increase in pay over the last decade. Been repeatedly laid off, only to endure extended periods of unemployment. Get's hit with a medical bill of catastrophic proportions while having their health insurance eliminated by their employer. All the while sinking slowing into credit card debt just paying for the necessities of life. The average American, lost 15% of their real net wealth over the last 10 years, while the top 1% saw their personal wealth explode in value.
In fact this is the standard picture for America's new vanishing middle class. The situation is grim, and these are not lazy irresponsible people. Many of these people have always been able to pay their bills in the past and are only now facing a situation where working even two jobs is insufficient to make ends meet. Sixty years ago, a man could go to virtually any school in the country with a GI loan, get a good job, buy a home, raise a family and put his kids through college. Today both parents work because they must. If they want college, they have to pick the one they can afford, and run up incredible debt (hoping that they've chosen a major which will allow them to pay off their debt within ten years of graduation.) The only places in the U.S that have houses that are affordable are in depressed economic communities. So one is forced to balance cost of living with ability to generate income. Families now simply slide into debt doing the things our parents took for granted. Now a young couple must live a lean spartan existence and work like dogs just to establish the possibility of a stable footing. The chances that any young couple just starting are going to be able to send their kids to college grows ever more remote.
By the way, that bankruptcy affords little protection these days. In the face of economic collapse, many banks saw wisely to have Congress pass laws that ensure that you pay the lions share of your debt even if you file bankruptcy. So the consumer is naked, unprotected in a wilderness of ravening financial institutions, and when they raise their rates, its because they simply want more of your money for doing the same old thing. If the banks are issuing credit cards 6 months after a bankruptcy, its because they won't stop bleeding you until your dead. Its the consumer that has to live with the repercussions of bad credit for 7 years. The bank just keep bleeding the livestock.
How's the old joke go? What's the difference between a tick and a banker? When you die a tick falls off, the banker just keeps sucking.
Director Henry, could I please get your take on "Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act". President Obama has already signed this piece of legislation and it declares the entire world including The United States of America as the battlefield. In short it give our government the authority to detain or assassinate American citizens, without due process, the right to an attorney, or even the dignity of informing our friends and families that y'all decided we should be shot.
Our government has just declared war on the American people, and how exactly would you expect that we deal with this? Tea and crumpets? A harsh dressing down of our political representatives... posh, you naughty boys have subjugates my civil rights and get off my lawn! Sir, our founding fathers fought and died to give us the rights we now cherish, and with the stroke of a pen, we've seen these rights obliterated by self serving sycophants.
You sir say you are a keeper of law, a protector of America's freedom, well then why have you not arrested the very people who have seen fit to rob every American of that which is most precious. We've seen this behavior before, in Germany in the 1930s. The rich and powerful building a mote around themselves to protect themselves from the havoc that followed. This is not the America of our Founding Fathers, and for myself, I protest, I protest to high heaven, and I demand that my government be returned immediately.
I've been on both sides of this conversation and I understand the temptation for engineers and techies to just figure out a local solution, get the job done and be productive in the moment. Now just for a moment, put yourself in the position of an IT professional.
They are responsible for: The whole intranet working, efficiently, cooperatively, and securely. You have 10-20 little network fiefdoms, with different hardware, operating systems, application software, security, network interfaces, proprietary services and infrastructure and degree of collaboration and shared resources. Now you have to make this mob of PCs, Macs, Linux/Unix servers, and personal devices, all singing, all dancing, while sharing consolidated storage and corporate resources. You have to have consistent access and availability to the internet. You have to provide intranet access to dozens or hundred of smart phones, tablets and laptops, while at the same time providing some semblance of security and application accessibility (have you got even the foggiest idea how easy it is to have a bluetooth device and use it to get into a corporate network?)
You have to meet corporate guidelines, bring up ethical issues (should or shouldn't employees expect their email to be private when it runs through corporate servers?) and stay on top of the growing list of compliance to government regulation. The last item is an issue the keeps IT specialist up at night. The government is making it absolutely clear that it's willing to hammer large businesses that don't meet minimum federal standards for data security and compliance. Add to that laws which intrude into business operation (everything from HIPPA to DMCA) and IT has to be on top of nearly every byte comes and goes from an enterprise server.
Then of course you have employees, accessing social networks, reading anything from funnies to personal email, streaming music and video on corporate servers and networks, playing games and doing any of a thousand things they probably shouldn't be doing on a corporate network. Laptops, pads and smart phones come and go all day, and expose your secure data to terrible threat. Anybody can now plug a 128 GB USB thumb-drive into computer and slurp off a ton of proprietary data.
All those personal devices, with different OSs; IOS, Android, OSX, Windows, Blackberry, and all those devices with different apps some play nice, but whole bunch are shoddy slap-together security disasters. If you have recently heard about huge breaches in banking and financial institutions or massive government fine against corporations that didn't comply with new regulations in data security or proper operating practices, you're simply not been paying attention to the business news. All of this becomes even more critical for a start-up or small company. Lose you IP and goodbye company. Breach a serious government restriction and there goes your company and the penalties nowadays may not end with just fines.
Play nice with your IT team. Yes, there are occasionally despotic little tinpot dictators protecting their little corporate territory (I find however, that is more often than not the fault of higher management, and that such fiefdoms abound in such an organization) bur for the most part, more often though, your IT professional are there to provide the best service they can inside the constraints of best corporate practice. IT just needs to find the best balance between the needs of the corporation vs the needs of the individual. Talk to your IT manager, come up with a clear procedure for submitting apps to IT for review, and if they don't violate corporate standards, can be integrated into the corporate environment.
Actually, you could easily provide all the shielding you need with as little as 3 feet of ice. Build a cylindrical craft whose outer wall is 5 meters of water ice with all the mineral salts that would be required to support all kinds of life to be brought on the mission. A powerful magnetic field further protect the craft from possible radiation storms and cosmic rays. A significant traction of the ice is heavy water for fusion reactors. A ship like this could make the trip between Earth and Mars in just a few weeks. Along the way it drops automated mining equipment on hundreds of near earth asteroids. These mines produce the raw materials including volatiles for the Martian colonies. That and rare metals for the economy on Earth. Ferry material to the Martian moons for dissemination to the planet from a local small gravity well.
You want to have fun, make the ship a sentient life-form. A genetically engineered being, possible cetacean? Maybe avian? Its not a new idea, but it has a lot of possibility and we just now at the point where we are soon going to be able to engineer new life-forms. This would be a great use for the tech.
They could mine the atmosphere and the planet's hyperabundant heat, to crack hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. They could then sell fuel to ships trafficking in the inner solar system. The signs would be awesome... next fuel stop 40 million clicks, come on in, get a bite, clean up, see the amazing Venusian sun sets.
Actually I'm a little surprised... With the M$ million man legal team, I figured litigation like this wouldn't actually reach resolution until the heat death of the universe... Oh yeah, silly me, it hasn't resolved yet has it?... go on everybody,scoot, nothing here to see!
If you think of the Senate as a live performance of "The 100 Stooges" its actually pretty humorous. And then of course you remember they're crapping legislation all over our collective lives and the crying starts. It is however cathartic. Maybe next election we can make some of them cry a little?
Ever heard of the names for different groups of animals? A herd or pod or covey? There are more anthropomorphic names too. A murder of crows, an exhalation of doves, a pride of lions. The one most fitting however, in the context of this conversation is a "CONGRESS OF BABOONS". Somehow watching DC circle jerk with the right hand and back stab with the left makes me think that it might just be time for a little chlorine in the shallow end of the gene pool.
Slashdot Mirror
Wires, battery, LED... $5. Pissing off the staff at your local fusion center... Priceless!!!
There are simply dozens of ways to address the frailty of the human body and the injuries we acquire as a function of living in a modern society filled with great big moving metal objects. The machines that convey us, so exceed the designs of being human its almost mind numbing. The fastest vehicles travel faster than Mach 20. The human body is designed to travel at distance at around at 5-10 mph and in short sprints at around 15 mph. You fall or bang into something going that fast and you will probably sprain or break something. Simply incredible.
The first thing we will do is augment externally. This is however crude and inelegant. Shortly after we will begin to seriously augmenting internally (actually these trends are already in place, there are plenty of implant for the human body today, but that number is soon to explode), and there will be significant overlap between the two. Next we will have control of our physiology at the genetic then molecular level with the advent of nanotechnology and our bodies will become artwork. Designs that will be interesting, unique, specific to a given need. This will be the beginning of true super humans, and the species with transform. Finally, as our augmented selves determine the best materials from which to build bodies and minds, we may well migrate from protein. Who's to say.
I hope you're not citing "Data" as an authoritative example of a mechanical life form. Think Asimo over at Honda. Can you say "Massive Maintenance!!!" So how do you power your machine? You have to eat something? You have to store energy. You have to eliminate waste products, every machine produces them. Your meat body is just an insanely complex machine with several hundred trillion moving parts, and its amazingly well designed. Able to get energy from abundant natural resources, convert that energy very efficiently into all kinds of interesting work. Its even capable of replicating itself and shuffling the genome to ensure genetic diversity. You over estimate the advantages of being a mechanical being. At least in anything resembling the near future.
Most of the things you're interested in having could be done with modifying the human body itself. Engineering the genome, augmentation, introduction of new technologies like nanotechnology when it arrives. You could ultimately build a body that is a super body in virtually every way.
Thanks for the opinion General Grievous. By the way, a single blaster shot to the heart and you are buggered sir!
The good news is that this is unsustainable and will ultimately collapse. A country that tries to protect its authority by blinding itself to the worlds advance, is operationally doomed. It might take a year, it might take a couple generations, but such a country can't compete at any level on a world market, and will have less and less to offer as one by one they deplete their natural resources.
The bad news is that before they fold, a lot of innocent people are going to suffer horribly. Sadly, the kinds of things one can do to try to remedy such a problem child are few, and will have limited impact.
The ugly part of this mess is the complex relationship between Russia, Belarus, and the rest of eastern and western Europe. Many of the complexities of oil trade and other less legal trade going in and coming out of Slavic countries are bolstering these dictatorial regimes. Its perhaps time to question any kind of trade with a nation that eat its own young.
Clearly your grasp of economics is as poor as your grasp of history. Here's an important bit of useful information. Look for the truth with an open mind. If you're simply cherry picking information to justify your point of view, you'll be doomed never to see what it actually so. Here's the hint, If you belong to one of those families of ideologues that continually submits some variation of the same old rehashed piece of ideological tripe, whose origin it is determined makes it of questionable value or veracity, then stop. You haven't justified your position, you just torpedoed it.
Give me ten similar but distinctly different thesis from renowned and reputable sources. That would be interesting and enlightening.
Communism and Capitalism are equally flawed by their very nature and for the same fundamental reason. They are human enterprises and left unchecked, human beings are arrogant, self obsessed, greedy, controlling, Machiavellian bustards who will gladly eat their own young and grind up their own parents for personal profit. If history tells us nothing, it tells us that power in the hands of a few is destined to precipitate the demise of many (including the original powerful few.) Either of these systems "COULD WORK" with the proper checks and balances, limits to personal power and some sane method for determining the wants and needs of the vast members of those societies so that those needs could be met effectively and ongoingly. Interestingly, modern technology makes either systems now more potentially workable than they were in the past.
What made America great was checks and balances. It made it possible for government to actually do the job of governing, because no one person could ever amass enough power to successfully hijack the entire system, so nobody even tried. Its only been over the last 30 years that business has had the means and the opportunity to plunder our government, by having laws restricting dangerous or unfair practices repealed, and in short shattering both the checks and balances and the Bill of Rights. The reason we are fine with China, is because we are quickly becoming a Fascist Totalitarian state, effectively meeting them in the middle. Recent laws passed or in the process of passing eliminate the cornerstones of American liberty and democracy. We are now a nation of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation. Because of this we have been watching an every growing succession of boom/bust cycles, each more devastating than the last. The signs are here now for all to see, they blaze like the noon day sun. Grotesque financial inequity. Absurd acts of greed and the wholesale raping of the middle class. An economic system so fragile it teeters on the edge of complete implosion. A world ravaged of natural resource and human dignity. Global policies ground not in benefit to human populations but benefit to global corporate interests. Businesses once served the nation to which they belong, now they suck their mother nations dry and bounce the proceeds around the world to manipulate tax and business advantage.
I fear this new fascist state far more than either constrained Capitalistic or Communistic systems. Its time to put the rods back in the reactor, and place strong constraints on economic and political systems before we all reap the coming catastrophe.
You might just want to holster that big fat ego for a moment. From a purely objective view, that shit cleaner risks his life to prevent outbreaks of typhus, disentery, and a whole raft of sanitation related horrors that have haunted humanity for thousands of years. He may have a nasty job, but you better believe its a critical and vital task.
You on the other hand spend your day scribbling on paper. Unless your research leads to the immediate end of disentery forever, my vote goes to the shit cleaner, because his work has an immediate and tremendously higher impact on my life than yours. Have you seen the per hour wage of a journeyman plumberv these days? Me thinks the only thing shitty here was your choice of example.
Now if you want to compare yourself to a divorce lawyer or maybe a member of The House, I would absolutely be willing to discuss that for the most part you do no harm, while these high paid idiots proceed to tear down our society. The fact that these men and women are almost certainly better paid than you, and often through means of questionable morality or legality, would add all kinds of new and interesting nuance and resonance to your question.
Perhaps you would do better to compare yourself against another who scribbles all day, a medical bureaucrat or maybe a lab technician? All useful jobs that contribute eh? It does beg the question what do you research? Clearly some lines of research will have greater worth to society than others. This is not to denigrate pure research, knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a noble thing, its simply that its immediate or obvious worth to society would tend the be more philosophical in nature. That's a very hard thing to take to the bank.
Actually I was more of the mind that teaching ethical behavior from preschool through to post graduate work would be a useful part of the future of being human. They used to teach ethics as part of a number of degree paths. Somehow, this ends justifies the mean, free fall to the lowest human common denominator has made all of us the poorer. Its time to teach our children that they have a responsibility to themselves and one another. That compassion and dignity aren't useless appendices to sliced off of the human condition, but fundamental ethical considerations that may well determine the worth and fate of humanity.
There's a famous story about a poor Scottish farmer who saved a boy from dying in a bog. The next day the boys Father, a wealthy Lord, came to the farmer and thanked him for his kind deed. In fact he said for saving my son's life, I give your son all the advantages of my wealth and position. The farmer's son went to the best schools and became a renowned Doctor. The Lord's son was Winston Churchill and the farmer' son was Dr. Alexander Flemming. When Winston Churchill came down with pneumonia, it was penicillin discovered by Flemming that saved him. How dramatically different might all our lives be today without the compassion and dignity shown by all of these men.
Its time for us to bring these conversations back to our society. These conversations used to be part of our religious teaching. As religion has receded in importance in American culture, it's time now to bring an ethical grounding that promotes doing the right thing for its own sake, to our society. Its time for our children to enjoy the benefits of a society inhabited by people who strive as much for the common good as personal self interest.
So at one level I can see your resentment. Its not fair to subsidize the irresponsible. My question is that when you see someone overweight coming out of a car in a handicapped parking place, do you even for one microsecond consider that their malady might be the reason for their obesity. I was in a car accident in 2002. I shattered my right leg, and had to have my right foot reattached. There is an 8 inch steel plate and over 2 dozen stainless steel screws in my ankle, leg and a 4 inch screw through my right knee where I suffered a plateau fracture of the right tibia, That is where the force of the impact is so great it splits the tibia down the middle like splitting a rail.
Before that, I'd won fitness awards. It was a long time I spent on my back, then a wheel chair, then crutches. I put on a lot of weight due to the sudden change in my lifestyle and the inability to stand on my bad leg. I'm only now (10 years later) at a point in my life where I think with the help of the right trainer/physical therapist I might be able to get myself back into shape. My leg however, will always hurt, and will never again function fully (unless the day comes that it can be replaced with a perfect working replica.) Do you see me as one of you lazy irresponsible fat bodies who doesn't deserve a placard?
Even when I get back down to my proper weight and fitness level, I will endure continuous pain and the inability to walk significant distances. You wouldn't be able to tell from a distance except perhaps by my slight limp or if you looked carefully you might notice something strange about the shape of my right ankle. Would you just assume I'm gaming the system, cheating you and the public in general. All I'm saying is rather than jumping to the worst conclusion immediately, perhaps you should stop for a second and ask yourself why that person has gotten a handicapped placard or license plate. Ultimately it takes a doctor to say a person needs it or not, though most doctors will lean towards the needs and want of the patient, a good doctor would almost certain say to a simply obese patient, get your fat ass to the furthest parking space and walk... its good for you. That is of course assuming they put their patient's well being ahead of looking good or making people happy. As well, you might just stop for a moment and wonder if an obese person would give up their placard in a heart beat to be fully healthy and vibrant again. I know I would.
Don't be so quick to judge, unless you've walked a mile on my crutches.
I don't know, the last couple years of his life, I think I could live with Steve getting a handicapped space. I've had a handicapped placard for over 10 years (after a major car accident.) I see people parking illegally all the time. Even when there is legal parking just a few spaces away. I'm lucky, I can walk a little ways (in spite of the severe pain.) There are many who are wheelchair bound who need the special large parking spaces to exit their vehicles. People who take those places because they are lazy or resent not those places not being used as often as regular space are arguing against showing the injured and handicapped special consideration in what amounts to one of the smallest possible ways. Its almost nothing to an able bodied person to walk a few yards more to a store entrance. For a number of handicapped people its the difference in being able to go to the store and not.
It wouldn't hurt the world to develop a miniscule amount of compassion and human dignity. Sadly our society as a whole has been remiss in instilling these qualities in our children today.
All of this is the predictable result of growing technology. Technology amplifies human intent. There are two great forces in the world. The first being the human desire to own, control, manipulate and squeeze to benefit me or us (focused self interest.) The other being to human need to create, advance, promote the greater good for all, collaborate and serve to benefit all. These are not intrinsically right or wrong, just different. Its when technology has amplified these ambitions in humanity to world shaking heights that we find ourselves at odds.
We must allow for artists to create new visions of what is possible closed or open. These creations however must sit inside of a world designed to serve all for the benefit of all. The greater good must dominate the worlds infrastructure. It is only in a context that serves all, that the more limited context of single self expression can flourish without destroying the very people for whom the creation should be serving. We need to make this a clear and public conversation, such that new creators can fully understand the repercussions of their choices and the ultimate value of their inventions. By making the total environment clear, and seeing how the many parts work inside the larger system, we can allow new players to choose positions that will server precise who they choose to serve.
With this breakthrough, it will now be possible to create high performance solar furnaces for the production of solar cells. literally taking petrochemicals out of the equation and using sunlight to capture sunlight for power. This is a groundbreaking shift towards a solar economy. The implications are revolutionary.
To date, the true cost of solar collection had to include the high cost in petroleum products to create the cells in the first place. This marks a new age of solar manufacture and will be most essential when humanity begins building on the Moon and Mars. The energy source in abundance in these new places will be solar. To the degree we perfect the production of solar energy over the next 20 years, we will have a profound foothold on other worlds in the inner solar system.
The problem has been a predictable result of Corporations railing against restriction and regulation. We put powerful rods in the reactor of capitalism when at the turn of the twentieth century a succession of economic disasters was precipitated by wholesale greed and financial practices that made a tiny few rich, but impoverished the masses.
We find ourselves learning the hard way, that we haven't changed in any significant way in 100 years, that greed is ultimately destructive and that our economic engines need exactly the same kind of checks and balances that our political engines require, because in the end, its all about the best and worst in being human. If you don't ensure stability, diversity and fair competition, you get boom-bust, profound disparity and a system which us ultimately unsustainable.
Corporations must be separated from government, for the benefit of both. Both must have a strong set of checks and balances (for example, corporations must not have the rights of human beings.) Both must have strong external guidance based on the greater good of society including environmental necessity, social responsibility and human dignity. A system of rewards and punishment must be implemented that moves these great forces in a direction that serves the needs of humanity and not the other way around.
The problem is a fundamentalist, puritanical desire to render retribution from prisoners instead of addressing the real underlying issues. The current system is disaster to the guilty it warehouses and an obscenity to the innocent people wrongly convicted. Its just easier to blame people, have public lynchings and dispose of the bodies, than actually look at the issues of organized crime, drug abuse, violence in our culture and what is quickly becoming a nation which criminalizes its poor. Growing studies show that there is no justice in the justice system. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas this year, with what amounts now to a mountain of evidence that he was innocent of any crime. Confronted with either looking soft on crime or doing the right thing, Governor Perry chose instead to have an innocent man executed. Capital punishment is the new coliseum. There isn't a single sane argument that supports capital punishment.
Prison's should be divided into those who can be rehabilitated and those that can't or shouldn't be. Both sides of the prison can do useful work, earn a wage that provides for their families, restitution to victims and pay their own cost of living. For those in the side supporting rehabilitation, giving them job skills and real life skills, that will serve them when they leave will dramatically reduce recidivism. Separating career criminals from young people who made a mistake, is a vital step in ending the criminal cycle. Keeping the most dangerous and violent offenders separate, and ensuring that they aren't in a position to do harm, will immediately enhance the security for both guards and inmates.
You absolutely need to check out the Khan Academy. Besides a very comprehensive grade school curriculum, the site has tools to support a teacher in finding out what students know and where they are having difficulty, so they can concentrate on helping a student where they need it most. As well, the Khan Academy has opened up public tutoring to give students the special support they need from people who've volunteered to teach. This is an amazing site and an incredible resource.
Don't feel bad. It just means we're responsible for becoming the extraterrestrials. We need to seed the universe with humanity (and as many other intelligent species as we can can help get liberated from this little mud ball.) There are countless fascinating environments in this solar system alone. Wealth and resources to beggar the imagination. With a commitment to space faring, we could have sustainable habitats all over the solar system in this century.
With the building materials available in the Asteroid Belt, Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, we could scatter sentience across the stars. We might master faster than light travel. We might not. We would certainly be able to ensure that whatever cataclysms that befell earth in the near or distant future, sentient life would continue to exist, and the earth's greatest gift to the universe would persist.
Maybe, one day, millions of years from now, when we fill the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy, and have found ways to utilize any kind of matter we come across to sustain ourselves, we will bump into another sentient life form. However, there will be no time when we are alone, because we will have each other.
For every person out there who "carelessly" over-spends and digs themselves into debt, then glibly declares bankruptcy, we have several thousand people out there who've seen virtually no increase in pay over the last decade. Been repeatedly laid off, only to endure extended periods of unemployment. Get's hit with a medical bill of catastrophic proportions while having their health insurance eliminated by their employer. All the while sinking slowing into credit card debt just paying for the necessities of life. The average American, lost 15% of their real net wealth over the last 10 years, while the top 1% saw their personal wealth explode in value.
In fact this is the standard picture for America's new vanishing middle class. The situation is grim, and these are not lazy irresponsible people. Many of these people have always been able to pay their bills in the past and are only now facing a situation where working even two jobs is insufficient to make ends meet. Sixty years ago, a man could go to virtually any school in the country with a GI loan, get a good job, buy a home, raise a family and put his kids through college. Today both parents work because they must. If they want college, they have to pick the one they can afford, and run up incredible debt (hoping that they've chosen a major which will allow them to pay off their debt within ten years of graduation.) The only places in the U.S that have houses that are affordable are in depressed economic communities. So one is forced to balance cost of living with ability to generate income. Families now simply slide into debt doing the things our parents took for granted. Now a young couple must live a lean spartan existence and work like dogs just to establish the possibility of a stable footing. The chances that any young couple just starting are going to be able to send their kids to college grows ever more remote.
By the way, that bankruptcy affords little protection these days. In the face of economic collapse, many banks saw wisely to have Congress pass laws that ensure that you pay the lions share of your debt even if you file bankruptcy. So the consumer is naked, unprotected in a wilderness of ravening financial institutions, and when they raise their rates, its because they simply want more of your money for doing the same old thing. If the banks are issuing credit cards 6 months after a bankruptcy, its because they won't stop bleeding you until your dead. Its the consumer that has to live with the repercussions of bad credit for 7 years. The bank just keep bleeding the livestock.
How's the old joke go? What's the difference between a tick and a banker? When you die a tick falls off, the banker just keeps sucking.
Director Henry, could I please get your take on "Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act". President Obama has already signed this piece of legislation and it declares the entire world including The United States of America as the battlefield. In short it give our government the authority to detain or assassinate American citizens, without due process, the right to an attorney, or even the dignity of informing our friends and families that y'all decided we should be shot.
Our government has just declared war on the American people, and how exactly would you expect that we deal with this? Tea and crumpets? A harsh dressing down of our political representatives... posh, you naughty boys have subjugates my civil rights and get off my lawn! Sir, our founding fathers fought and died to give us the rights we now cherish, and with the stroke of a pen, we've seen these rights obliterated by self serving sycophants.
You sir say you are a keeper of law, a protector of America's freedom, well then why have you not arrested the very people who have seen fit to rob every American of that which is most precious. We've seen this behavior before, in Germany in the 1930s. The rich and powerful building a mote around themselves to protect themselves from the havoc that followed. This is not the America of our Founding Fathers, and for myself, I protest, I protest to high heaven, and I demand that my government be returned immediately.
I've been on both sides of this conversation and I understand the temptation for engineers and techies to just figure out a local solution, get the job done and be productive in the moment. Now just for a moment, put yourself in the position of an IT professional.
They are responsible for: The whole intranet working, efficiently, cooperatively, and securely. You have 10-20 little network fiefdoms, with different hardware, operating systems, application software, security, network interfaces, proprietary services and infrastructure and degree of collaboration and shared resources. Now you have to make this mob of PCs, Macs, Linux/Unix servers, and personal devices, all singing, all dancing, while sharing consolidated storage and corporate resources. You have to have consistent access and availability to the internet. You have to provide intranet access to dozens or hundred of smart phones, tablets and laptops, while at the same time providing some semblance of security and application accessibility (have you got even the foggiest idea how easy it is to have a bluetooth device and use it to get into a corporate network?)
You have to meet corporate guidelines, bring up ethical issues (should or shouldn't employees expect their email to be private when it runs through corporate servers?) and stay on top of the growing list of compliance to government regulation. The last item is an issue the keeps IT specialist up at night. The government is making it absolutely clear that it's willing to hammer large businesses that don't meet minimum federal standards for data security and compliance. Add to that laws which intrude into business operation (everything from HIPPA to DMCA) and IT has to be on top of nearly every byte comes and goes from an enterprise server.
Then of course you have employees, accessing social networks, reading anything from funnies to personal email, streaming music and video on corporate servers and networks, playing games and doing any of a thousand things they probably shouldn't be doing on a corporate network. Laptops, pads and smart phones come and go all day, and expose your secure data to terrible threat. Anybody can now plug a 128 GB USB thumb-drive into computer and slurp off a ton of proprietary data.
All those personal devices, with different OSs; IOS, Android, OSX, Windows, Blackberry, and all those devices with different apps some play nice, but whole bunch are shoddy slap-together security disasters. If you have recently heard about huge breaches in banking and financial institutions or massive government fine against corporations that didn't comply with new regulations in data security or proper operating practices, you're simply not been paying attention to the business news. All of this becomes even more critical for a start-up or small company. Lose you IP and goodbye company. Breach a serious government restriction and there goes your company and the penalties nowadays may not end with just fines.
Play nice with your IT team. Yes, there are occasionally despotic little tinpot dictators protecting their little corporate territory (I find however, that is more often than not the fault of higher management, and that such fiefdoms abound in such an organization) bur for the most part, more often though, your IT professional are there to provide the best service they can inside the constraints of best corporate practice. IT just needs to find the best balance between the needs of the corporation vs the needs of the individual. Talk to your IT manager, come up with a clear procedure for submitting apps to IT for review, and if they don't violate corporate standards, can be integrated into the corporate environment.
Actually, you could easily provide all the shielding you need with as little as 3 feet of ice. Build a cylindrical craft whose outer wall is 5 meters of water ice with all the mineral salts that would be required to support all kinds of life to be brought on the mission. A powerful magnetic field further protect the craft from possible radiation storms and cosmic rays. A significant traction of the ice is heavy water for fusion reactors. A ship like this could make the trip between Earth and Mars in just a few weeks. Along the way it drops automated mining equipment on hundreds of near earth asteroids. These mines produce the raw materials including volatiles for the Martian colonies. That and rare metals for the economy on Earth. Ferry material to the Martian moons for dissemination to the planet from a local small gravity well.
You want to have fun, make the ship a sentient life-form. A genetically engineered being, possible cetacean? Maybe avian? Its not a new idea, but it has a lot of possibility and we just now at the point where we are soon going to be able to engineer new life-forms. This would be a great use for the tech.
They could mine the atmosphere and the planet's hyperabundant heat, to crack hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. They could then sell fuel to ships trafficking in the inner solar system. The signs would be awesome... next fuel stop 40 million clicks, come on in, get a bite, clean up, see the amazing Venusian sun sets.
Actually I'm a little surprised... With the M$ million man legal team, I figured litigation like this wouldn't actually reach resolution until the heat death of the universe... Oh yeah, silly me, it hasn't resolved yet has it?... go on everybody,scoot, nothing here to see!
If you think of the Senate as a live performance of "The 100 Stooges" its actually pretty humorous. And then of course you remember they're crapping legislation all over our collective lives and the crying starts. It is however cathartic. Maybe next election we can make some of them cry a little?
Ever heard of the names for different groups of animals? A herd or pod or covey? There are more anthropomorphic names too. A murder of crows, an exhalation of doves, a pride of lions. The one most fitting however, in the context of this conversation is a "CONGRESS OF BABOONS". Somehow watching DC circle jerk with the right hand and back stab with the left makes me think that it might just be time for a little chlorine in the shallow end of the gene pool.
Uh, is that C-5 you have sliced up on top??? Mmmmmm, spicy!