Hmmm. Three options: 1. Spend $500 on a 3D printer. Print Gun. Assemble. get ammo someplace. Hold Somebody up. 2. Spend $200 on a gun at a gun show with no background check. Comes with ammo. Hold somebody up. 3. Steal gun and ammo from friend, relative, or next door neighbor. Hold somebody up.
Given the cost-benefit analysis, it could be many years indeed before 3D printers are cheap enough to worry about.
"The human population of the Earth has increased by about 2.7 times since I was born in 1952 (2.6 billion to 7 billion). That obviously can't continue."
And it won't. By 2100, 2/3rds of the human population will be dead, of old age.
" The Earth is finite so there has to be a limit. If we don't do something to limit population growth on our own the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse [wikipedia.org] will take care of it for us."
No need, the Eugenicists with their sterility programs have taken care of it for us.
"Other than China and the occasional laws in the past on forced sterilization for certain groups I'm not aware of any government restricting births. "
Oh, they switched to "voluntary"....if you can call pulling all the brown teenagers out of math class to listen to 12 hours of lectures on the wonderful help barrier contraception and permanent sterility is "voluntary".
" While there is a correlation between population growth and growth in anthropogenic causes of climate change the real link is to the increase in fossil fuel use for energy. Our technology has progressed to the point where we can get most of that energy now from non-fossil fuel sources. It'll take 30-40 years to build up that infrastructure but it's starting to happen right now. It's time to stop fouling our own nest with fossil fuels."
And it would happen even without your help- because we're running out of fossil fuels. So once again, this is a problem that isn't really a problem.
But the real trick is that it HAS happened rapidly before. Rapidly enough to cause extinction of some species. But mammals are more adaptable. And humans are WAY more adaptable. The tundra has wonderful soil- several thousand years of peat moss running several feet deep, with water sources currently frozen, but that will change with global warming.
And so I repeat, what is the problem? There is no need whatsoever to panic about any of it. Overpopulation- we already THROW AWAY enough food to feed twice the population of the planet, and strictly restrict food production currently to keep prices high. Water and soil, there's plenty of that locked up in the poles that global warming will free up.
But if you believe the lies of Malthus and haven't checked demographic data *recently*, I can see why you might be in a panic.
I wish the grandparent had not posted AC, for he makes a very real point: Supply/demand pricing structures simply do not work when the cost of creating the supply is nothing.
That reminds me of an early 1980s copy protection scheme I heard about- signing the (magnetic floppy) disk with a ball point pen before formatting, then using a special cataloging program to record and analyze bad sectors at bootup.
Worked well until hard drives came into play, but a sector copy program that ignored bad sector warnings could accurately defeat it.
The one that worked for me is similar- a bitmapped serial number that allowed me to purchase only the features I want (including an expensive option with all the secret bits turned on with a promise of unlimited future feature unlocks for free, which is the one I went with). Crippleware is the ONLY strategy I've ever seen that didn't make me want to break the scheme and yet still pay.
Twitter only makes things worse. It surrounds you with a large bubble of people with similar views. How is that any different than how ANY of the last 6 presidential administrations have been run anyway, other than to give you more people with the same views as yours to pretend that you're in your own little information world bubble?
My reaction was "So what is the brand of green laser that is putting out 65.5 mw instead of 5mw? And will ThinkGeek be buying up the remaining supply before the government confiscates it?
The drumbeat of Climate Change driving Malthusian Eugenics in governmental policy has been unrelenting for my entire life. Even during the 1970s when it was "pollution will cause a new ice age" for a few years, the co-opting of science for Malthusian Eugenics has been pretty darn steady, claiming we need to drastically reduce our population.
It isn't a problem because mammals existed in the Miocene Climatic Optimum 15 million years ago, when CO2 levels were much much higher and the Earth a good 10 degrees warmer, and sea levels were 80-120 feet higher. It is a matter for adaptation, not panic. Plant food (and take advantage of atmospheric CO2 fertilization to raise more food) further north, move the cities inland, fixes the "problem". It just isn't the catastrophe that so many have made it out to be. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1929238,00.html
To be exact, from Pliny the Elder- a horse like animal with no fur, feet like an elephant, and a horn on it's nose. I've seen a few, in the zoo. But we usually call them by their Greek name instead of their Latin name, and that might confuse you.
"that explicitly states that God created animals and man from scratch, in direct contradiction to the Theory of Evolution."
Explain why random movements of quarks creating animals and man from scratch is any different that God using the engineering method of evolution to create animals and man from scratch.
" since RealClimate is run by some of the leading climate scientists"
Thus proving my point that it is biased. See, that's the problem with authority in general, and the reason why appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
The problem with appeal to authority as a fallacy, of course, becomes "If you can't trust the authorities, who can you trust"? and "How can you possibly have Knowledge without Direct Observation"?
The best models take the data in real time, but have very little predictive value- only reporting value. Our window into the future- and often our window into the past- is very dark indeed, even now.
If my Lord Jesus Christ chooses to send me to Hell, I shall gladly go there to serve him.
Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori is indeed my watchword. I'm not afraid to die because I know for a fact that death is just the beginning, the beginning of a better chance to serve than my malfunctioning nervous system currently allows me.
But all that is beside the point that in their extreme form of skepticism, the New Atheists have become irrational, removing evidence that should not be removed merely because it activates their personal Ugh fields. Not that religion is free of this either- rational religions try to destroy such superstition, but fundamentalists abound who refuse to look at evidence that pertains to their particular Ugh Fields.
And for the Atheist, their big Ugh Field is the possibility of morality being objective- of there being something larger than them dictating THEIR morality.
" The researchers are for the most part paid by the institution that employes them and not from the grant."
And the institution gets the money to employ them from....Grants. A scientist who doesn't publish, who doesn't tickle the ears of his peers to get published (after all, what is peer review other than preaching to the choir?), is soon found out on his ear.
" Do you think they're getting rich? PhD's are generally well paid in the low 6 figures but they're not really rich."
I'd love to get paid low six figures to do research. That's pretty easy living compared with what 85% of America has to do to earn a living.
What makes you think a website called "realclimate.org" is going to have anything close to real data posted at all? Might as well believe Pravada on the good social works of Vladymir Putin.....Or the New York Times on the works of St. Obama.
Faith is never without the presence of evidence. It is just a form of evidence that you fail to understand. Your personal failure does not define rationality.
". Do you think they want to be like the emperor with no clothes when their falsification is discovered? "
Once they have the grant money, why would they care?
"What makes you think I said scientists were infallible? I don't just start with the assumption that they failed. I think when they are wrong most of the time it's honest mistakes and not attempts to make the science something it isn't."
I'm far more cynical. I think they're usually wrong most of the time. They have some models that are useful, but the model is NOT the reality, and mistaking it for such is always a mistake.
"If you think that scientists are in it for the money and presenting false conclusions about climate change then how is it that most of the things they thought would happen are happening on schedule if not ahead of schedule?"
Really? I don't see 20' of water covering downtown Manhattan yet. And I certainly don't see the ice age that was predicted for this time back in 1974.
"That's a pretty big assumption that global warming will increase food production."
Not much of one at all, if you have ever studied the effect of CO2 on plant growth.
" It may but there will probably be many years of adjustments to our agricultural system to get there. More likely as long as the climate system remains in a state of flux it will be more difficult to sustain the yields we're currently getting."
Only if we're not smart enough to take advantage of the increased growing season in the north.
"As I said, the level of conspiracy required to support your positions is not credible. When did the conspiracy start?"
When Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations".
"After all the first person to state that a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere would cause a rise it temperatures was Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Papers on the potential for global warming from the rise of CO2 were starting to be published in the 1950's. In 1967 the subject was presented to President Lyndon B. Johnson as something we would have to deal with eventually. Despite the supposed global cooling scare of the 1970's there were only 7 papers published on global cooling compared to 44 on global warming from 1965-1979. So when did this conspiracy get started?"
With the elimination of the forests of England in 1596.
"I'm not saying there aren't people trying to take advantage of the situation but very few if any scientists are. "
Scientists are people too.
" It's just not credible that thousands of scientists around the world are all in on a conspiracy to falsify the evidence."
It's called capitalism and it has been around for about 400 years.
". They're smart enough to know that they couldn't get away with it forever."
They don't need to get away with it forever. They just have to get the grants now.
" The reality of what happens on the ground would overtake their mendacious statements within 2 or 3 decades. So far they've been more right than wrong."
Moving goalposts. Have they been 100% infallible or have they been more right than wrong?
"For me the primary question is scientific, not political. For you it seems the politics is informing your opinion of the science and that's backwards."
The effect on the human species MUST come before the science, or the science will become a factor in our extermination.
Slashdot Mirror
More yes- especially since the people I'd really worry about are the ones who would *steal* the guns and ammo from the guy who bought it for $200.
Hmmm. Three options:
1. Spend $500 on a 3D printer. Print Gun. Assemble. get ammo someplace. Hold Somebody up.
2. Spend $200 on a gun at a gun show with no background check. Comes with ammo. Hold somebody up.
3. Steal gun and ammo from friend, relative, or next door neighbor. Hold somebody up.
Given the cost-benefit analysis, it could be many years indeed before 3D printers are cheap enough to worry about.
You're right, I meant parent.
"The human population of the Earth has increased by about 2.7 times since I was born in 1952 (2.6 billion to 7 billion). That obviously can't continue."
And it won't. By 2100, 2/3rds of the human population will be dead, of old age.
" The Earth is finite so there has to be a limit. If we don't do something to limit population growth on our own the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse [wikipedia.org] will take care of it for us."
No need, the Eugenicists with their sterility programs have taken care of it for us.
"Other than China and the occasional laws in the past on forced sterilization for certain groups I'm not aware of any government restricting births. "
Oh, they switched to "voluntary"....if you can call pulling all the brown teenagers out of math class to listen to 12 hours of lectures on the wonderful help barrier contraception and permanent sterility is "voluntary".
" While there is a correlation between population growth and growth in anthropogenic causes of climate change the real link is to the increase in fossil fuel use for energy. Our technology has progressed to the point where we can get most of that energy now from non-fossil fuel sources. It'll take 30-40 years to build up that infrastructure but it's starting to happen right now. It's time to stop fouling our own nest with fossil fuels."
And it would happen even without your help- because we're running out of fossil fuels. So once again, this is a problem that isn't really a problem.
But the real trick is that it HAS happened rapidly before. Rapidly enough to cause extinction of some species. But mammals are more adaptable. And humans are WAY more adaptable. The tundra has wonderful soil- several thousand years of peat moss running several feet deep, with water sources currently frozen, but that will change with global warming.
And so I repeat, what is the problem? There is no need whatsoever to panic about any of it. Overpopulation- we already THROW AWAY enough food to feed twice the population of the planet, and strictly restrict food production currently to keep prices high. Water and soil, there's plenty of that locked up in the poles that global warming will free up.
But if you believe the lies of Malthus and haven't checked demographic data *recently*, I can see why you might be in a panic.
I wish the grandparent had not posted AC, for he makes a very real point:
Supply/demand pricing structures simply do not work when the cost of creating the supply is nothing.
That reminds me of an early 1980s copy protection scheme I heard about- signing the (magnetic floppy) disk with a ball point pen before formatting, then using a special cataloging program to record and analyze bad sectors at bootup.
Worked well until hard drives came into play, but a sector copy program that ignored bad sector warnings could accurately defeat it.
The one that worked for me is similar- a bitmapped serial number that allowed me to purchase only the features I want (including an expensive option with all the secret bits turned on with a promise of unlimited future feature unlocks for free, which is the one I went with). Crippleware is the ONLY strategy I've ever seen that didn't make me want to break the scheme and yet still pay.
Twitter only makes things worse. It surrounds you with a large bubble of people with similar views. How is that any different than how ANY of the last 6 presidential administrations have been run anyway, other than to give you more people with the same views as yours to pretend that you're in your own little information world bubble?
But wouldn't that be the point? A seemingly ordinary green laser pointer, that when aimed at dry paper, can start fires?
My reaction was "So what is the brand of green laser that is putting out 65.5 mw instead of 5mw? And will ThinkGeek be buying up the remaining supply before the government confiscates it?
The drumbeat of Climate Change driving Malthusian Eugenics in governmental policy has been unrelenting for my entire life. Even during the 1970s when it was "pollution will cause a new ice age" for a few years, the co-opting of science for Malthusian Eugenics has been pretty darn steady, claiming we need to drastically reduce our population.
It isn't a problem because mammals existed in the Miocene Climatic Optimum 15 million years ago, when CO2 levels were much much higher and the Earth a good 10 degrees warmer, and sea levels were 80-120 feet higher. It is a matter for adaptation, not panic. Plant food (and take advantage of atmospheric CO2 fertilization to raise more food) further north, move the cities inland, fixes the "problem". It just isn't the catastrophe that so many have made it out to be.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1929238,00.html
To be exact, from Pliny the Elder- a horse like animal with no fur, feet like an elephant, and a horn on it's nose. I've seen a few, in the zoo. But we usually call them by their Greek name instead of their Latin name, and that might confuse you.
I do, using the definition of unicorn documented by Pliny the Elder. We usually call them rhinoceros (horn-nose) today.
"that explicitly states that God created animals and man from scratch, in direct contradiction to the Theory of Evolution."
Explain why random movements of quarks creating animals and man from scratch is any different that God using the engineering method of evolution to create animals and man from scratch.
Bigotry goes both ways, you know.
"There is very little evidence that they are biased toward anything but good science."
Except for their constant appeals to politics to solve a problem that isn't a problem.
" since RealClimate is run by some of the leading climate scientists"
Thus proving my point that it is biased. See, that's the problem with authority in general, and the reason why appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
The problem with appeal to authority as a fallacy, of course, becomes "If you can't trust the authorities, who can you trust"? and "How can you possibly have Knowledge without Direct Observation"?
The best models take the data in real time, but have very little predictive value- only reporting value. Our window into the future- and often our window into the past- is very dark indeed, even now.
GK Chesterton wrote an entire novel about that. He also wrote a very interesting Essay that got included in All Things Considered http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/gkc16028.htm
Your personal Ugh Fields do not define data or evidence.
If my Lord Jesus Christ chooses to send me to Hell, I shall gladly go there to serve him.
Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori is indeed my watchword. I'm not afraid to die because I know for a fact that death is just the beginning, the beginning of a better chance to serve than my malfunctioning nervous system currently allows me.
But all that is beside the point that in their extreme form of skepticism, the New Atheists have become irrational, removing evidence that should not be removed merely because it activates their personal Ugh fields. Not that religion is free of this either- rational religions try to destroy such superstition, but fundamentalists abound who refuse to look at evidence that pertains to their particular Ugh Fields.
And for the Atheist, their big Ugh Field is the possibility of morality being objective- of there being something larger than them dictating THEIR morality.
" The researchers are for the most part paid by the institution that employes them and not from the grant."
And the institution gets the money to employ them from....Grants. A scientist who doesn't publish, who doesn't tickle the ears of his peers to get published (after all, what is peer review other than preaching to the choir?), is soon found out on his ear.
" Do you think they're getting rich? PhD's are generally well paid in the low 6 figures but they're not really rich."
I'd love to get paid low six figures to do research. That's pretty easy living compared with what 85% of America has to do to earn a living.
What makes you think a website called "realclimate.org" is going to have anything close to real data posted at all? Might as well believe Pravada on the good social works of Vladymir Putin.....Or the New York Times on the works of St. Obama.
Protip: Do good or go to hell has NEVER been the truth about Catholic theology.
The choice has ALWAYS been "Love God and your Neighbor and you will go to Heaven".
Hell is like dark. You can't have light without dark. And the Church has never proclaimed that any person has gone to hell.
So I say you never were a Roman Catholic- either that, or you never got beyond a 6 year old's understanding of theology.
The fact that you are irrational doesn't make the religion irrational.
Faith is never without the presence of evidence. It is just a form of evidence that you fail to understand. Your personal failure does not define rationality.
". Do you think they want to be like the emperor with no clothes when their falsification is discovered? "
Once they have the grant money, why would they care?
"What makes you think I said scientists were infallible? I don't just start with the assumption that they failed. I think when they are wrong most of the time it's honest mistakes and not attempts to make the science something it isn't."
I'm far more cynical. I think they're usually wrong most of the time. They have some models that are useful, but the model is NOT the reality, and mistaking it for such is always a mistake.
Good idea- didn't think of that one. But like I said- CD players were just coming out when I was in college.
"If you think that scientists are in it for the money and presenting false conclusions about climate change then how is it that most of the things they thought would happen are happening on schedule if not ahead of schedule?"
Really? I don't see 20' of water covering downtown Manhattan yet. And I certainly don't see the ice age that was predicted for this time back in 1974.
"That's a pretty big assumption that global warming will increase food production."
Not much of one at all, if you have ever studied the effect of CO2 on plant growth.
" It may but there will probably be many years of adjustments to our agricultural system to get there. More likely as long as the climate system remains in a state of flux it will be more difficult to sustain the yields we're currently getting."
Only if we're not smart enough to take advantage of the increased growing season in the north.
"As I said, the level of conspiracy required to support your positions is not credible. When did the conspiracy start?"
When Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations".
"After all the first person to state that a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere would cause a rise it temperatures was Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Papers on the potential for global warming from the rise of CO2 were starting to be published in the 1950's. In 1967 the subject was presented to President Lyndon B. Johnson as something we would have to deal with eventually. Despite the supposed global cooling scare of the 1970's there were only 7 papers published on global cooling compared to 44 on global warming from 1965-1979. So when did this conspiracy get started?"
With the elimination of the forests of England in 1596.
"I'm not saying there aren't people trying to take advantage of the situation but very few if any scientists are. "
Scientists are people too.
" It's just not credible that thousands of scientists around the world are all in on a conspiracy to falsify the evidence."
It's called capitalism and it has been around for about 400 years.
". They're smart enough to know that they couldn't get away with it forever."
They don't need to get away with it forever. They just have to get the grants now.
" The reality of what happens on the ground would overtake their mendacious statements within 2 or 3 decades. So far they've been more right than wrong."
Moving goalposts. Have they been 100% infallible or have they been more right than wrong?
"For me the primary question is scientific, not political. For you it seems the politics is informing your opinion of the science and that's backwards."
The effect on the human species MUST come before the science, or the science will become a factor in our extermination.