Claims of its "efficiency" or "eco-friendliness" are the most base slight of hand.
Far more gas is used, and far more polution produced (fossil and/or radioactive) by electric cars than their counterparts powered by turning combustion directly into motion.
electric cars are actually a bullshit propaganda scheme in the first place.
In my opinion, using a big rock whose entire job seems to be to act as an asteroid shield and a tide generator as a power source is pretty damned intelligent.
Now, I agree with you on this one, but I'm glad you added the "seems to be" part. Therin lies the whole problem. We have a bit of a weakness for thinking we understand what we really don't. A key example of this is what is going on in the fields of North America with genetically engineered crops. Plants that looked completely benign and super-l33t in the lab are passing genes off to wild plants, letting fieldside weeds acquire resistance to Roundup and all those other brand-name herbicides.
Monarch butterflies are dying from the BT-pesticide-enhanced canola pollen, not from eating it directly, (which monarchs don't do), but from the pollen being blown onto milkweed plants which feeds migrating butterflies. Who would have seen that one happening? Nobody.
The caution that I would just like to voice is that "resources" aren't always "just sitting there waiting for us". Extracting oil from the ground is pretty much okay, except for what we do with it once we get it out, and sucking hydrogen off the moon would probably be okay too (supposing we found a way). But often, what we view as a resource "just sitting there" is actually doing a lot for us! Take trees in a river valley for example. Cut them down and you flood the river with silt from rain runoff and kill the fish. Seems obvious now, but nobody said anything until the 80's.
There's no money in sitting back and saying "Things are pretty good now, let's just figure out how we can fix some of our mistakes and maybe stop exploiting the third world". There -is- money in the latest miracle drug/product/crop/sodee pop. Yay capitalism.
So, when you're asked to explain to your kids why we burned all the gas and fucked up the atmosphere and killed all the amphibians, your explanation will be:
"But lots of people would have had to learn new job skills!"
Sounds pretty lame to me. I think your kids will say so too.
Oh, and about being on the "verge of fusion, fuel cell and superconductors", I've got news. Fuel cells work on gasoline, since we don't have any source of hydrogen, and fusion is so horribly complicated that we're going to have to continue dumping gigadollars into it before we get anything useful.
We've been on the 'verge of great things' since the 1950's. Where are our jet-cars now?
One idea I saw kicking around for the Berlin project was quite similar to what you're saying... Since the whole windowing system would be vector-based, windows could pulse, or spin, or waggle, or do any number of things to get your attention. Colorblind people rejoice!
The only problem for a company trying to leverage x86 compatibility in the "post-PC market" is that without a decent sized screen, a keyboard, or a mouse, a vast chunk of desireable x86 software is now useless. What's the point of running Adobe Photoshop on your handheld? It seems to me that when the available hardware is so vastly different between a desktop and an 'appliance', x86 compatibility isn't so much of an issue.
Witness how useless Windows CE is, and how slick Palm is. Windows CE is Windows shoehorned onto a portable, Palm was written from the ground up. Likewise, most of the x86 software that you would want to run would seem just as awkward when placed on a 8" LCD screen and accessed with a stylus.
And if you're going to suggest that appliances won't be that crippled, then you're committed to a larger screen, some hard drive storage, a mouse, and a keyboard - that sounds like a laptop to me.
if Wal-Mart does a 'bait and switch' and raises their prices back up again, there is an ample opportunity for a new competitor to move into town and for Wal-Mart to get its ass kicked.
No. Wal-Mart can crush any competition that comes near. All Wal-Mart has to do is bait until they drive their competition out of business, then they can charge what the market will bear and make a shiteload of money. If any competitors come and start the laborious and capital-intensive process of opening a new store, Wal-Mart can just call on its corporate resources, drop their prices again, and drive the upstart competitor into bankruptcy. The manager of the local Wal-Mart isn't going to sit on his ass while the little guy moves in, he/she's not dumb.
Earth - been there done that. Time for something new.
Sorry my friend, but there is no 'something new', we have no habitable planets we're going to be able to get to, and we're fucking the one we have up the ass with a chainsaw. Gently.:)
Graphic metaphors aside, please consider the option that we should be concentrating on better stewardship of the planet we have, rather than looking into space for salvation. As long as we have a society that guzzles energy in order that we should have WWF Raw Monday nights and plastic toys in your Happy Meal, we're not making any sort of progress.
Just like Seattle, Canadians tend to leave British Columbia out of the whole picture... Out West here, we have no snow. Well, except on the mountains, where there's enough to draw half of the skiing population of North America.
And we have lots of women that are drop dead gorgeous, but they're always talking on their (&^$ cellphones.
We were going to go to Mars too... but we spent all the money on weed. Actually, I think we did go to Mars once... or maybe we did... hmm... I forget, man.
So anyhow,
P.S. My buddy in the border patrol is making that hash in his garage!
Or better yet, do use a glass thermos, since they won't shatter at those temperatures, but leave the top just slightly unscrewed. That way it won't blow up from vapor pressure, and you won't spend a lot of money.
Or, even better, use a stainless steel thermos. Just don't lick it.
For the most part people have one kid at a time; they have eveyr opportunity to decide how many they can afford. If they have too many, well that is their problem. No skin off my nose; I don't pay for them.
People have kids so that they can be supported in their old age. The poorer they are, the more they'll need in order that they won't die alone in a government home. Socialized governments give people the security that, in less altruistic societies, could only be got by having capable offspring. Therefore socialized, rich countries have a lower birth rate. It's a fact.
Secondly, it will be your problem, because if people are too poor, they're going to do what they have to do to survive, and if that means breaking into your BMW and taking the radio, then that's what they'll do.
Poor populations are especially bad; they cost far more than they put in.
Prove it. Troll.
Were we to stop [welfare], then we could honour the rights of the populace and be making economically sound decisions. The best of both worlds.
It may make sense to you, but it doesn't to me. Please elaborate.
Should that someone be a person that ignores what goes on around them, or someone with enough presence to take advantage of what life offers?
I don't get what you're saying. Who would be that person? Left to my own devices, I would back the quote-unquote 'environmental nuts'. Are you proposing a Plato-styles 'Philosopher King?'
I certainly don't believe that the board of directors of corporations that are legally obligated to maximize profit should make decisions affecting the entire country. No matter how altruistic individual businessmen are (and that's not saying much, ha ha), they are legally accountable and must try their best to create an environment in which their business can rake it in. And in the system of 'democracy' in the USA and Canada, a good way to create such an environment is to back a political candidate who will do what you want.
The system sucks. But, it sucks a bit less than most of the other alternatives that have been tried on such a large scale. I'm not comparing it to Stalin or Pol Pot's governments. But looking at what happened to the Seattle protesters, one could be forgiven for a bit of cynicism, no?
The British Geological Survey boys put in a reccomendation to the British government to allocate funds for a disaster management program in the case of an eruption from Yellowstone. The USGS is very unconcerned as far as I can see... I suppose they've got it very well monitored.
Here is the transcript of a slightly sensationalist BBC programme on supervolcanoes. Take w/ salt.
Geologic time is slow. But, who knows, it could erupt in two years or in two thousand, or longer. Just another thing to think about.:)
Last I heard, China had some rigid population control laws. Next, the Chinese won't be allowed to have them at all (the natural way).
I'm not going to try and say that the ethics of population control are sparkly and great. But consider this - the earth can only sustainably support so many people! I'm not going to try and spout a number, but I'm hoping that you'll agree that there is a finite limit. At that point, would you still be opposed to birth control/population control? Many people say that we passed that point a few decades ago.
Or would you rather that two parents living on a $40,000 salary have seven premature, sickly babies that will have to deal with their birth defects for the rest of their lives?
Two kids per couple... isn't that a modest proposal?
Honestly, we got lucky. Any way you look at it, the standoff between the USA and the USSR was scary at the time. My little sister would refuse to listen to the radio because she was afraid she wouldn't wake up the next day. Of course, this is kind of like saying "The origin of life was so unlikely", in that I likely wouldn't be alive to type this if nuclear war had broken out.
Don't be naive about the consequences of our increasing knowledge of the human genome. It will be used for warfare, for targeting biological weapons to specific ethnic types. Or, much more likely, for purposes so original that I don't even have a clue about them.
Sometimes I just wish that the magma bubble under Yellowstone Park would pop, flood 1/2 of the continental USA, plunge the world into decades of cloud-shrouded, plant-killing darkness, and put a hold on this charade. But, we'll just have to wait and see. It's about 4,000 years overdue, or so say the geologists.
Re:thoughts on Katz, Eugenics, and such
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 2
You cannot turn back the clock -- you cannot unsplit the atom, make the world flat again, or place the Earth at the center of the universe.
You're right. Once discovered, scientific knowledge rarely goes away, especially in this day and age of the printing press, etc.
However, just because we have the scientific knowledge, doesn't mean that Atomic bombs, ICBMs, and WWF RAW on Monday nights are a logical consequence. We choose to incorporate them into our society, in one way or another. In the case of North Americans, the overwhelming majority of people don't know the facts or don't care, and allow their decisions to be made for them by those who do know the facts and have a lot of money invested in their acceptance.
Though everyone's going to laugh, I'd like to point out a little country nestled between China and India named 'Bhutan'. The valleys in which most of the population lives are fairly isolated by mountains, so the most convenient way to enter the main city from abroad is by air. Because of this isolation, and because of their small size, they have a very pronounced sense of community. Technology is given an inspection for its benefits and costs before it is adopted. For example, they have chosen not to recieve cable or satellite, but they do have local broadcasting and a booming movie rental business. Tourbuses full of the typical package-tourist aren't allowed, but you're more than welcome to come visit, so long as you're not upset by the idea of actually visiting another country, one where you can't get a Big Mac.
Anyhow, long and short - Don't imply that just because technology exists, that we must use it. We collectively choose to use it because those who have the most to gain from its acceptance assure the public that it's perfectly safe and will cure cancer, AIDS, and that bored feeling at 2:30 on Sundays. Think DDT (perfectly safe at the time), early fertility drugs (perfectly safe at the... oops, flipper baby), and now G.E. foods (perfectly safe, oops, now genes are jumping to make herbicide resistant weeds... and all the monarch butterflies are dying from eating BT-genetic-pesticide 'enhanced' pollen...)
There used to be a time when search engines were flooded with hundreds of links to pr0n sites. Nowadays, although the pr0n sites are still present, there is also a deluge of the aforementioned personal homepages. These homepages lack any worthwhile content and thus spoil the signal to noise ratio of the internet, making it almost impossible to use a search engine to track down useful information.
*Sigh* Back in the good old days... Now those Geocities peasants have destroyed the "signal to noise ratio" of the Internet and diluted all that porno to the point where I can't find any good stuff anymore!!!
Why won't Geocities people put up some "worthwile content?" Like breasts!
>I think your elitist vision of a net only accessible to the privileged educated few would be quite horrible
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate?
Well, for one, nobody's forcing you to look at the low-quality websites (such as this one). Secondly, the low-quality websites may be sucking bandwidth, but if it wasn't for the... umm... "unwashed masses" using the Internet, we wouldn't have telcos drooling to drop in new optic fiber and speed it up! Honestly man, take a step back and look at yourself. You're talking like a stereotypical technological elitist.
Because rather than having to pander to corporate whims we can design the web to suit us?
Who is 'us'? You can design your web to suit yourself, just don't follow any link to a site you haven't checked for 'Nostalgia Compliance' (tm)
What about this fills you with such fear?
Well, the thought of someone as closed-minded as you dictating what should and shouldn't be on the web.
Hehe... or I could have skipped the rebuttal and just called you a Fascist. On second thought -
Slashdot Mirror
Claims of its "efficiency" or "eco-friendliness" are the most base slight of hand.
Far more gas is used, and far more polution produced (fossil and/or radioactive) by electric cars than their counterparts powered by turning combustion directly into motion.
electric cars are actually a bullshit propaganda scheme in the first place.
Methinks you're trolling a bit, no?
In my opinion, using a big rock whose entire job seems to be to act as an asteroid shield and a tide generator as a power source is pretty damned intelligent.
Now, I agree with you on this one, but I'm glad you added the "seems to be" part. Therin lies the whole problem. We have a bit of a weakness for thinking we understand what we really don't. A key example of this is what is going on in the fields of North America with genetically engineered crops. Plants that looked completely benign and super-l33t in the lab are passing genes off to wild plants, letting fieldside weeds acquire resistance to Roundup and all those other brand-name herbicides.
Monarch butterflies are dying from the BT-pesticide-enhanced canola pollen, not from eating it directly, (which monarchs don't do), but from the pollen being blown onto milkweed plants which feeds migrating butterflies. Who would have seen that one happening? Nobody.
The caution that I would just like to voice is that "resources" aren't always "just sitting there waiting for us". Extracting oil from the ground is pretty much okay, except for what we do with it once we get it out, and sucking hydrogen off the moon would probably be okay too (supposing we found a way). But often, what we view as a resource "just sitting there" is actually doing a lot for us! Take trees in a river valley for example. Cut them down and you flood the river with silt from rain runoff and kill the fish. Seems obvious now, but nobody said anything until the 80's.
There's no money in sitting back and saying "Things are pretty good now, let's just figure out how we can fix some of our mistakes and maybe stop exploiting the third world". There -is- money in the latest miracle drug/product/crop/sodee pop. Yay capitalism.
"But lots of people would have had to learn new job skills!"
Sounds pretty lame to me. I think your kids will say so too.
Oh, and about being on the "verge of fusion, fuel cell and superconductors", I've got news. Fuel cells work on gasoline, since we don't have any source of hydrogen, and fusion is so horribly complicated that we're going to have to continue dumping gigadollars into it before we get anything useful.
We've been on the 'verge of great things' since the 1950's. Where are our jet-cars now?
One idea I saw kicking around for the Berlin project was quite similar to what you're saying... Since the whole windowing system would be vector-based, windows could pulse, or spin, or waggle, or do any number of things to get your attention. Colorblind people rejoice!
Witness how useless Windows CE is, and how slick Palm is. Windows CE is Windows shoehorned onto a portable, Palm was written from the ground up. Likewise, most of the x86 software that you would want to run would seem just as awkward when placed on a 8" LCD screen and accessed with a stylus.
And if you're going to suggest that appliances won't be that crippled, then you're committed to a larger screen, some hard drive storage, a mouse, and a keyboard - that sounds like a laptop to me.
if Wal-Mart does a 'bait and switch' and raises their prices back up again, there is an ample opportunity for a new competitor to move into town and for Wal-Mart to get its ass kicked.
No. Wal-Mart can crush any competition that comes near. All Wal-Mart has to do is bait until they drive their competition out of business, then they can charge what the market will bear and make a shiteload of money. If any competitors come and start the laborious and capital-intensive process of opening a new store, Wal-Mart can just call on its corporate resources, drop their prices again, and drive the upstart competitor into bankruptcy. The manager of the local Wal-Mart isn't going to sit on his ass while the little guy moves in, he/she's not dumb.
Usually served up with a side dish of sexual innuendo. At least this (real) version has some internal rhyme.
Earth - been there done that. Time for something new.
Sorry my friend, but there is no 'something new', we have no habitable planets we're going to be able to get to, and we're fucking the one we have up the ass with a chainsaw. Gently. :)
Graphic metaphors aside, please consider the option that we should be concentrating on better stewardship of the planet we have, rather than looking into space for salvation. As long as we have a society that guzzles energy in order that we should have WWF Raw Monday nights and plastic toys in your Happy Meal, we're not making any sort of progress.
All this is IMO. But that goes w/o saying.
Me too. I'd start listing addresses if it would get me more karma. :)
And we have lots of women that are drop dead gorgeous, but they're always talking on their (&^$ cellphones.
We were going to go to Mars too... but we spent all the money on weed. Actually, I think we did go to Mars once... or maybe we did... hmm... I forget, man.
So anyhow,
P.S. My buddy in the border patrol is making that hash in his garage!
You can get better shit in BC!
And if you don't know what British Columbia is, then I give up.
Or, even better, use a stainless steel thermos. Just don't lick it.
3M's Flourinert
my colourless liquid gold
this shit's expensive
CAN THIS BE ACHIEVED???
Of course it can be achieved, it says in the title that you made the bloody thing!!
Sensationalists. I'm surprised their site is faring as well as it is, I guess not too many /.ers are checking it out.
For the most part people have one kid at a time; they have eveyr opportunity to decide how many they can afford. If they have too many, well that is their problem. No skin off my nose; I don't pay for them.
People have kids so that they can be supported in their old age. The poorer they are, the more they'll need in order that they won't die alone in a government home. Socialized governments give people the security that, in less altruistic societies, could only be got by having capable offspring. Therefore socialized, rich countries have a lower birth rate. It's a fact.
Secondly, it will be your problem, because if people are too poor, they're going to do what they have to do to survive, and if that means breaking into your BMW and taking the radio, then that's what they'll do.
Poor populations are especially bad; they cost far more than they put in.
Prove it. Troll.
Were we to stop [welfare], then we could honour the rights of the populace and be making economically sound decisions. The best of both worlds.
It may make sense to you, but it doesn't to me. Please elaborate.
I don't get what you're saying. Who would be that person? Left to my own devices, I would back the quote-unquote 'environmental nuts'. Are you proposing a Plato-styles 'Philosopher King?'
I certainly don't believe that the board of directors of corporations that are legally obligated to maximize profit should make decisions affecting the entire country. No matter how altruistic individual businessmen are (and that's not saying much, ha ha), they are legally accountable and must try their best to create an environment in which their business can rake it in. And in the system of 'democracy' in the USA and Canada, a good way to create such an environment is to back a political candidate who will do what you want.
The system sucks. But, it sucks a bit less than most of the other alternatives that have been tried on such a large scale. I'm not comparing it to Stalin or Pol Pot's governments. But looking at what happened to the Seattle protesters, one could be forgiven for a bit of cynicism, no?
Oh yeah, that's right... Crap. Thanks.
Here is the transcript of a slightly sensationalist BBC programme on supervolcanoes. Take w/ salt.
Geologic time is slow. But, who knows, it could erupt in two years or in two thousand, or longer. Just another thing to think about. :)
If the US dives headlong into this, you may not like the result, but if history is the best oracle the US will dominate.
Hooray! The workers slave, the rich get more, oligarchy marches on! Long live the sham democracy that is the USA.
Now who do you want to make your decisions for you? The Gore Fortune 500 or the Bush Fortune 500?
Last I heard, China had some rigid population control laws. Next, the Chinese won't be allowed to have them at all (the natural way).
I'm not going to try and say that the ethics of population control are sparkly and great. But consider this - the earth can only sustainably support so many people! I'm not going to try and spout a number, but I'm hoping that you'll agree that there is a finite limit. At that point, would you still be opposed to birth control/population control? Many people say that we passed that point a few decades ago.
Or would you rather that two parents living on a $40,000 salary have seven premature, sickly babies that will have to deal with their birth defects for the rest of their lives?
Two kids per couple... isn't that a modest proposal?
Don't be naive about the consequences of our increasing knowledge of the human genome. It will be used for warfare, for targeting biological weapons to specific ethnic types. Or, much more likely, for purposes so original that I don't even have a clue about them.
Sometimes I just wish that the magma bubble under Yellowstone Park would pop, flood 1/2 of the continental USA, plunge the world into decades of cloud-shrouded, plant-killing darkness, and put a hold on this charade. But, we'll just have to wait and see. It's about 4,000 years overdue, or so say the geologists.
You cannot turn back the clock -- you cannot unsplit the atom, make the world flat again, or place the Earth at the center of the universe.
You're right. Once discovered, scientific knowledge rarely goes away, especially in this day and age of the printing press, etc.
However, just because we have the scientific knowledge, doesn't mean that Atomic bombs, ICBMs, and WWF RAW on Monday nights are a logical consequence. We choose to incorporate them into our society, in one way or another. In the case of North Americans, the overwhelming majority of people don't know the facts or don't care, and allow their decisions to be made for them by those who do know the facts and have a lot of money invested in their acceptance.
Though everyone's going to laugh, I'd like to point out a little country nestled between China and India named 'Bhutan'. The valleys in which most of the population lives are fairly isolated by mountains, so the most convenient way to enter the main city from abroad is by air. Because of this isolation, and because of their small size, they have a very pronounced sense of community. Technology is given an inspection for its benefits and costs before it is adopted. For example, they have chosen not to recieve cable or satellite, but they do have local broadcasting and a booming movie rental business. Tourbuses full of the typical package-tourist aren't allowed, but you're more than welcome to come visit, so long as you're not upset by the idea of actually visiting another country, one where you can't get a Big Mac.
Anyhow, long and short - Don't imply that just because technology exists, that we must use it. We collectively choose to use it because those who have the most to gain from its acceptance assure the public that it's perfectly safe and will cure cancer, AIDS, and that bored feeling at 2:30 on Sundays. Think DDT (perfectly safe at the time), early fertility drugs (perfectly safe at the... oops, flipper baby), and now G.E. foods (perfectly safe, oops, now genes are jumping to make herbicide resistant weeds... and all the monarch butterflies are dying from eating BT-genetic-pesticide 'enhanced' pollen...)
A healthy dose of cynicism helps reality go down.
*Sigh* Back in the good old days... Now those Geocities peasants have destroyed the "signal to noise ratio" of the Internet and diluted all that porno to the point where I can't find any good stuff anymore!!!
Why won't Geocities people put up some "worthwile content?" Like breasts!
Elitist pig. Go back to your TRS-80 and die. :)
Now that that's done, do you want the Bush corporate interests or the Gore corporate interests to dictate public policy?
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate?
Well, for one, nobody's forcing you to look at the low-quality websites (such as this one). Secondly, the low-quality websites may be sucking bandwidth, but if it wasn't for the ... umm... "unwashed masses" using the Internet, we wouldn't have telcos drooling to drop in new optic fiber and speed it up! Honestly man, take a step back and look at yourself. You're talking like a stereotypical technological elitist.
Because rather than having to pander to corporate whims we can design the web to suit us?
Who is 'us'? You can design your web to suit yourself, just don't follow any link to a site you haven't checked for 'Nostalgia Compliance' (tm)
What about this fills you with such fear?
Well, the thought of someone as closed-minded as you dictating what should and shouldn't be on the web.
Hehe... or I could have skipped the rebuttal and just called you a Fascist. On second thought -
Fascist!