"Stats: 80% plus of americans (including our current elected leader) hold one (or more) superstitions as the basis for the formation (and often more) of the world and universe. 50% (more, actually, because there are many at the center of the curve) of Americans have an IQ of 100 or under. They wouldn't know science from sophist nonsense if you gave them a roadmap, a GPS, and a seeing-eye dog. They don't know what theory is, what it means, or what it implies. This is not their fault, at least in my view; it is the fault of the educational and political system, mainly. In a system that does not protect its citizens, why would we not expect them to turn their eyes to Zeus or the constellations?"
"We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh, we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."
Microsoft has had a "PC tax" for decades, getting a cut of the price of any PC sold, even if it had no MS product on it,
Tell that to Steve Jobs. Or Commodore. Or Atari.
I'd also point out, that, for years, a "PC" was by definition an IBM compatable machine that ran MS-DOS/Windows. Anyone that was in the PC business had made a decision to be in a business where they were dependent on Microsoft and the terms they wished to sell their products under. Microsoft doesn't owe anybody their products, and they didn't hold a gun to anyone's head to go into a business building machine specifically designed to run Microsoft's software. There was nothing stopping anyone who wanted to be in the computer business from producing their own system software. Plenty of companies did, and still do, just that.
Try copying a single copy of Windows onto all your boxes. Call Bill and tell him what you've done. Refuse to go to court, refuse to pay the fine, refuse to show up to prison. See what happens.
That's called "theft", and if Bill wants to have me locked up for it, he has to appeal to - surprise! - the government to do it. Bill doesn't have the authority or the means to send a couple of goons to drag me off to jail like the IRS does.
Corporations can and do kill people; you just don't hear about it. A diamond mine strike in Africa got some workers killed -- no one in jail last I heard. Corporations exist so that no one has personal responsiblity for their actions. Bhopal disaster in India. No on in jail. Union organizers rotting in holes. No one in jail. Poisonous landfills all over, cancer everywhere around them. No one in jail. Businesses DO kill.
Governments can and do kill people. Hitler's government killed around 20 million, Stalin's around 60 million, and Mao's many times more than that. In fact, in the 20th century, governments killed over 200 million of their own citizens, and that isn't even counting wars. Show me a comparable number of people killed by corporations.
I agree - you cut the sapling down while saws can still cut it, not wait until it's an unkillable forest.
But the point is, a business should not be able to make threats to a government agency and affect the way it's run. That's just too much power.
Some of us don't think that governments should be able to make threats to businesses and affect the way they're run.
Whatever power Bill Gates may have, he certainly doesn't have the power to take a penny of my earnings if I don't want him to have it. I don't have to work for him for the first four months of the year. He can't put me in prison for refusing to pay him or for disobeying his orders. He can't break into my house and search for drugs. He can't send my sons to war. He hasn't incinerated any religious sects, and none of his agents has shot a mother in the head while she was holding her baby. He doesn't even seem interested in doing any of these things.
Why is it that the sort of people who are always warning us against business monopolies never worry about monopolies of government power?
Modern reactors are far safer than their more temperamental counterparts of the 70s and 80s (Chernobyl? Three Mile Island?).
It's ridiculous to even mention Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in the same breath. What people seem to ignore is that the reactor at TMI functioned exactly as designed in the event of a meltdown - it shut itself down. I'd also point out that Three Mile Island is still in operation. Only one reactor was affected. The rest of the facility has been humming along quite nicely ever since.
Three Mile Island isn't an example of how dangerous nuclear technology is, it's an example of how safe it is.
Judging from the fact that we're now spending more on legal -- in part due to intellectual property insanity and increased wrangling over who "owns" what ideas -- it's just possible the legal system is becoming part of the problem.
I understand that it's morphing into something that's becoming part of the problem. That's exactly why I said I was worried about it. This country is becoming a place that's no longer an attractive destination for the talented and entrepreneurial. If you've noticed, our laws and economic system have changed quite a bit over the last several decades.
As I said originally, it was never our brilliant population (*smirk*) that accounted for our success.
Indeed, consider what America has in terms of natural resources, and what it has not gone through historically. Until recently, America had virtually limitless resources, be them land, petroleum, trees, ores, water, you name it.
If natural resources were the key, Africa would be running circles around us, and Hong Kong would look like Albania. Is that what you see?
Then there was slavery during the earlier years of the nation. That is what allowed America to flourish economically.
Um, you might want to consider the slave states of the South were an agrarian society. It was the Northern states where slavery was prohibited that became the industrial power. Indeed, our greatest growth as an industrial power occured after slavery was eliminated.
Now, don't forget that America also has not been seriously devastated by war in the past 150 years. In that timeframe Europe, Russia and Asia have had numerous destructive wars take place on their soil. They've had their infrastructure completely destroyed several times over.
You might want to think about why they had those wars in Europe, whereas we didn't have them here. Largely, it was because Europe and Asia were infested with utopian movements like Communism, Socialism and Nazism, which didn't make much of an impression on the more individualistic United States.
I remember hearing this business about our losing our scientific edge even as Apollo was landing astronauts on the moon. In itself, I really don't worry about it much. This has been a nation mostly of crackpots and bumpkins right from day one.
Our advantage never came from having the brightest of populations, it came from having an economic and legal system that placed few barriers in the paths of the talented, which also made this country an attractive place for talented foreigners to migrate to as well (think Andy Grove, Albert Einstein or Andrew Carnegie).
I'm a lot more worried about losing the advantages our legal and economic system afforded us than I am about some egalitarian vision of providing advanced education to the Great Unwashed.
(As an aside, I don't buy the idea that 50%+ of Americans are stupid or corrupt. No. I just think they're fucking pricks who can't stand the thought of their neighbor having sex with someone of the same sex, praying to a different God, or respecting the rights of others.)
Somehow, you've managed to ignore the fact that there are plenty of Americans who don't care who has sex with whom, don't even believe in God, and are all for other people exercising their legitimate rights.
And we still thought Kerry would have been an even worse choice than Bush.
(And as an aside, I didn't vote for either one of them, thankyouverymuch.)
Guess what: it's our ball. You want to play with our ball? Fine, we want that, too (basketball is not much fun one-on-none). Just don't go claiming it's yours.
Sounds like a typical bunch of socialists to me - provide them with a service for two weeks, and they'll figure it's a human right.
I pay taxes and my money is used on stuff that I don't approve of. Do I have a problem with it? Of course not. That's the way how a society works! Sharing and making compromises. "My tax money should not be used on stuff that I don't like" is nothing but self-centered Ayn Rand inspired whining.
Someday, someone will have to explain to me why people who want to hang on to their own money are "self-centered", while people who spend other people's money are "compassionate".
Actually, he's an incompetent, incoherent, religous fundamentalist fool even with a war.
He may be an incompetent, incoherent fool, but he's a Methodist, not a fundamentalist. If you were familiar with Methodist doctrine, you'd realize that it's actually quite liberal compared with most other strains of Christianity (for example, Methodists generally support legal abortion).
Alright, point taken. Now look at Canada on the map, larger than the US. Yet we're beating America too in broadband availability, so your argument doesn't hold water. It's all about policies by government.
What percentage of your population lives within 100 miles of the US boarder, as opposed to the Yukon Territories?
While you may have a point that you have a larger landmass and a smaller population, the fact is that population is concentrated in a fairly small region, not dispersed throughout the large land mass.
We have largely vast, empty spaces between Chicago and Los Angeles. What large population center do you have to connect to on the other side of the Yukon?
If that was the reason, you'd have the same excellent communication infrastructure at least in your major cities and associated suburbs and satellite communities.
Now I wasn't alive when our major space triumphs were taking place, so I may be all wet, but it seems to me like there's been a fundamental change in our culture that will prevent us from replicating or exceeding those successes.
Yep. But you've got it exactly backwards.
Reading sources from the '50s and '60s, I get the impression that there was much more concern (possibly driven by the race with the Soviets, but who cares?) for the advancement of knowledge for its own sake. People were much more willing to sacrifice a little bit of wealth for the long-term future of the society.
Nope. Notice when the space program came to a screeching halt: in the early '70s, when the bill for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Vietnam War came due. The prevelent feeling was that the money should be spent for social programs "for the good of society" rather than "impractical" things like space flight. Trust me for that - I lived through that era.
I'd point out that in the '50s and '60s, when we had an active and dynamic space program, taxes and governmnet revenue were a helluva lot lower than they are now, and we still managed to find the cash for rocket science.
It's not a matter of being willing to sacrifice a little bit of wealth for the long-term future of the society. It's a matter of priorities. These days, giving a handout to their constituents for votes is higher priority for most politicians than space flight. The government actually has a helluva a lot more money at it's disposal today than it ever did in the '50s and '60s.
You may not like UserLinux, but Perens is out doing work to try to produce social change.
Is that an endorsement or an indictment?
Seriously, if your going to write code, then fucking write code. If you want to change the world, then run for fucking office.
Actually, I'd love to see Bruce Perens run for office. Watching yet another two-bit socialist going down in flames at the polls is about as much fun as you can have with your pants on.
Does anyone else think that Bruce Perens is becoming an irrelevant also-ran? It seems to me that he's better known for starting projects in a flurry of publicity that wind up as vaporware (User Linux anyone?)
Bruce Perens is what you'd call the Jesse Jackson of OS/FS. He spends most of his time and energy jumping in front the cameras, and trying to get in front of parades that have already left.
/I guess s/he wouldn't feel much different than any of the other human ethnic groups that were almost wiped out over the years, in almost all parts of the world.
Oh wonderful! Just what we need, another aggrieved minority suing the government for compensation!
I wonder how much pressure will be put on South Korea where this is concerned because Jeebus doesn't like stem cells?
Probably plenty. Don't look now, but the crotch-monkey right is already starting to mobilize:
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Friday said he would veto legislation that would loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and expressed deep concern about human cloning research in South Korea.
"I'm very concerned about cloning," the president said. "I worry about a world in which cloning becomes accepted."
White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy said the work in South Korea amounted to human cloning for the sole purpose of scientific research. "The president is opposed to that," Duffy said. "That represents exactly what we're opposed to."
South Korean researchers, funded by their government, reported producing human embryos through cloning and then extracting their stem cells. It is a major advancement in the quest to grow patients' own replacement tissue to treat diseases.
The president also threatened a veto of legislation that would clear the way for taxpayer money to be spent on embryonic stem cell research.
A measure by Reps. Mike Castle, R-Del., and Diana DeGette, D-Colo., would lift Bush's 2001 ban on the use of federal dollars for research using any new embryonic stem cell lines.
"I made very clear to Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayer's money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life - I'm against that," Bush said. "Therefore, if the bill does that, I would veto it."
Bush, in his fifth year in office, has not yet exercised his first veto. The White House also promised a veto this week of a highway bill if it exceeded the administration's spending limits.
Bush began the day at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast where he was cheered for urging people to "pray that America uses the gift of freedom to build a culture of life."
The remark was a public reaffirmation of his position on sensitive issues such as abortion and stem cell research.
Bush recalled the legacy of the late Pope John Paul II and said, "The best way to honor this great champion of human freedom is to continue to build a culture of life where the strong protect the weak."
Bush won 52 percent of the Roman Catholic vote in last year's election and got the support of 56 percent of white Catholics, defeating the first Catholic presidential candidate from a major party since John F. Kennedy. In 2000, Bush narrowly lost the Catholic vote.
Last time I checked, you vote for the people who choose how much money to take and choose what to use that money for. If you disagree, vote for someone else.
You want control turned over to an international body. OK, that sounds reasonable. But the UN? I mean... how about somebody with a little more tech savvy and a little less politics?
Exactly why should we cede control of the net to an international body?
If the UN had wanted control over the internet, they should have subsidized it's development.
They didn't. The US government did. Now that the rest of the world is deriving a benefit from that investment, the UN thinks they're entitled to tell us how it's going to be run.
no I think the implication is that the pressure from the whacko-religious near-terrorist christian extremists would become to much to bear if the governament started patenting human-animal chimeras. It would errode the sacredicity of humanity by forcing them to move from their present all-or-nothing view humans, i.e. that thing god created first to an actual definition that would stand muster in a secular legal scope.
They'd sure flip if they got wind of an idea from one guy I heard of. He wants to genetically engineer half-human/half-simian sex slaves and market them under the trade names of Bimbonobo and Chimpanion. The day that happens watch the shit really hit the fan.
---
I expect the Religious Right will end up getting steam-rolled over the genetic engineering issue when the average inhabitant of Beijing is 7.5 feet tall, weighs 220 lb. all muscle and has an average IQ of 220. Either that, or Darwin will simply dispatch with them. The mental image of a zoo in Beijing with a specimen of a bible-thumping fundamentalist in a cage labeled "Moral-American Crotch-Monkey" and getting gawked at by a crowd of our hypothetical brilliant, 7.5 foot Beijingers (sp?) is just too funny for words.
Slashdot Mirror
"Stats: 80% plus of americans (including our current elected leader) hold one (or more) superstitions as the basis for the formation (and often more) of the world and universe. 50% (more, actually, because there are many at the center of the curve) of Americans have an IQ of 100 or under. They wouldn't know science from sophist nonsense if you gave them a roadmap, a GPS, and a seeing-eye dog. They don't know what theory is, what it means, or what it implies. This is not their fault, at least in my view; it is the fault of the educational and political system, mainly. In a system that does not protect its citizens, why would we not expect them to turn their eyes to Zeus or the constellations?"
"We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh, we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."
--Belloc
Microsoft has had a "PC tax" for decades, getting a cut of the price of any PC sold, even if it had no MS product on it,
Tell that to Steve Jobs. Or Commodore. Or Atari.
I'd also point out, that, for years, a "PC" was by definition an IBM compatable machine that ran MS-DOS/Windows. Anyone that was in the PC business had made a decision to be in a business where they were dependent on Microsoft and the terms they wished to sell their products under. Microsoft doesn't owe anybody their products, and they didn't hold a gun to anyone's head to go into a business building machine specifically designed to run Microsoft's software. There was nothing stopping anyone who wanted to be in the computer business from producing their own system software. Plenty of companies did, and still do, just that.
Try copying a single copy of Windows onto all your boxes. Call Bill and tell him what you've done. Refuse to go to court, refuse to pay the fine, refuse to show up to prison. See what happens.
That's called "theft", and if Bill wants to have me locked up for it, he has to appeal to - surprise! - the government to do it. Bill doesn't have the authority or the means to send a couple of goons to drag me off to jail like the IRS does.
Corporations can and do kill people; you just don't hear about it. A diamond mine strike in Africa got some workers killed -- no one in jail last I heard. Corporations exist so that no one has personal responsiblity for their actions. Bhopal disaster in India. No on in jail. Union organizers rotting in holes. No one in jail. Poisonous landfills all over, cancer everywhere around them. No one in jail. Businesses DO kill.
Governments can and do kill people. Hitler's government killed around 20 million, Stalin's around 60 million, and Mao's many times more than that. In fact, in the 20th century, governments killed over 200 million of their own citizens, and that isn't even counting wars. Show me a comparable number of people killed by corporations.
I agree - you cut the sapling down while saws can still cut it, not wait until it's an unkillable forest.
But the point is, a business should not be able to make threats to a government agency and affect the way it's run. That's just too much power.
Some of us don't think that governments should be able to make threats to businesses and affect the way they're run.
Whatever power Bill Gates may have, he certainly doesn't have the power to take a penny of my earnings if I don't want him to have it. I don't have to work for him for the first four months of the year. He can't put me in prison for refusing to pay him or for disobeying his orders. He can't break into my house and search for drugs. He can't send my sons to war. He hasn't incinerated any religious sects, and none of his agents has shot a mother in the head while she was holding her baby. He doesn't even seem interested in doing any of these things.
Why is it that the sort of people who are always warning us against business monopolies never worry about monopolies of government power?
Modern reactors are far safer than their more temperamental counterparts of the 70s and 80s (Chernobyl? Three Mile Island?).
It's ridiculous to even mention Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in the same breath. What people seem to ignore is that the reactor at TMI functioned exactly as designed in the event of a meltdown - it shut itself down. I'd also point out that Three Mile Island is still in operation. Only one reactor was affected. The rest of the facility has been humming along quite nicely ever since.
Three Mile Island isn't an example of how dangerous nuclear technology is, it's an example of how safe it is.
Judging from the fact that we're now spending more on legal -- in part due to intellectual property insanity and increased wrangling over who "owns" what ideas -- it's just possible the legal system is becoming part of the problem.
I understand that it's morphing into something that's becoming part of the problem. That's exactly why I said I was worried about it. This country is becoming a place that's no longer an attractive destination for the talented and entrepreneurial. If you've noticed, our laws and economic system have changed quite a bit over the last several decades.
As I said originally, it was never our brilliant population (*smirk*) that accounted for our success.
Indeed, consider what America has in terms of natural resources, and what it has not gone through historically. Until recently, America had virtually limitless resources, be them land, petroleum, trees, ores, water, you name it.
If natural resources were the key, Africa would be running circles around us, and Hong Kong would look like Albania. Is that what you see?
Then there was slavery during the earlier years of the nation. That is what allowed America to flourish economically.
Um, you might want to consider the slave states of the South were an agrarian society. It was the Northern states where slavery was prohibited that became the industrial power. Indeed, our greatest growth as an industrial power occured after slavery was eliminated.
Now, don't forget that America also has not been seriously devastated by war in the past 150 years. In that timeframe Europe, Russia and Asia have had numerous destructive wars take place on their soil. They've had their infrastructure completely destroyed several times over.
You might want to think about why they had those wars in Europe, whereas we didn't have them here. Largely, it was because Europe and Asia were infested with utopian movements like Communism, Socialism and Nazism, which didn't make much of an impression on the more individualistic United States.
I remember hearing this business about our losing our scientific edge even as Apollo was landing astronauts on the moon. In itself, I really don't worry about it much. This has been a nation mostly of crackpots and bumpkins right from day one.
Our advantage never came from having the brightest of populations, it came from having an economic and legal system that placed few barriers in the paths of the talented, which also made this country an attractive place for talented foreigners to migrate to as well (think Andy Grove, Albert Einstein or Andrew Carnegie).
I'm a lot more worried about losing the advantages our legal and economic system afforded us than I am about some egalitarian vision of providing advanced education to the Great Unwashed.
(As an aside, I don't buy the idea that 50%+ of Americans are stupid or corrupt. No. I just think they're fucking pricks who can't stand the thought of their neighbor having sex with someone of the same sex, praying to a different God, or respecting the rights of others.)
Somehow, you've managed to ignore the fact that there are plenty of Americans who don't care who has sex with whom, don't even believe in God, and are all for other people exercising their legitimate rights.
And we still thought Kerry would have been an even worse choice than Bush.
(And as an aside, I didn't vote for either one of them, thankyouverymuch.)
Guess what: it's our ball. You want to play with our ball? Fine, we want that, too (basketball is not much fun one-on-none). Just don't go claiming it's yours.
Sounds like a typical bunch of socialists to me - provide them with a service for two weeks, and they'll figure it's a human right.
By day, Eric Schmidt is a tax-n-spend, save-the-whales, let's-do-it-for-the-chil'run utopian kook
By night, he's an evil, conniving, mercantilist schmuck who abuses every tax loophole he can get his grubby little paws on.
So, in other words, he's a typical liberal, right?
I pay taxes and my money is used on stuff that I don't approve of. Do I have a problem with it? Of course not. That's the way how a society works! Sharing and making compromises. "My tax money should not be used on stuff that I don't like" is nothing but self-centered Ayn Rand inspired whining.
Someday, someone will have to explain to me why people who want to hang on to their own money are "self-centered", while people who spend other people's money are "compassionate".
Actually, he's an incompetent, incoherent, religous fundamentalist fool even with a war.
He may be an incompetent, incoherent fool, but he's a Methodist, not a fundamentalist. If you were familiar with Methodist doctrine, you'd realize that it's actually quite liberal compared with most other strains of Christianity (for example, Methodists generally support legal abortion).
Do not confuse Bush with some of his supporters.
Alright, point taken. Now look at Canada on the map, larger than the US. Yet we're beating America too in broadband availability, so your argument doesn't hold water. It's all about policies by government.
What percentage of your population lives within 100 miles of the US boarder, as opposed to the Yukon Territories?
While you may have a point that you have a larger landmass and a smaller population, the fact is that population is concentrated in a fairly small region, not dispersed throughout the large land mass.
We have largely vast, empty spaces between Chicago and Los Angeles. What large population center do you have to connect to on the other side of the Yukon?
And, yes I expect the government to set standards for the distal-GI tract paper products.
Somehow, that doesn't surprise me.
Well, at least you haven't demanded the government supply you with a tax-payer funded ass-wiper - yet.
If that was the reason, you'd have the same excellent communication infrastructure at least in your major cities and associated suburbs and satellite communities.
We do.
Now I wasn't alive when our major space triumphs were taking place, so I may be all wet, but it seems to me like there's been a fundamental change in our culture that will prevent us from replicating or exceeding those successes.
Yep. But you've got it exactly backwards.
Reading sources from the '50s and '60s, I get the impression that there was much more concern (possibly driven by the race with the Soviets, but who cares?) for the advancement of knowledge for its own sake. People were much more willing to sacrifice a little bit of wealth for the long-term future of the society.
Nope. Notice when the space program came to a screeching halt: in the early '70s, when the bill for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Vietnam War came due. The prevelent feeling was that the money should be spent for social programs "for the good of society" rather than "impractical" things like space flight. Trust me for that - I lived through that era.
I'd point out that in the '50s and '60s, when we had an active and dynamic space program, taxes and governmnet revenue were a helluva lot lower than they are now, and we still managed to find the cash for rocket science.
It's not a matter of being willing to sacrifice a little bit of wealth for the long-term future of the society. It's a matter of priorities. These days, giving a handout to their constituents for votes is higher priority for most politicians than space flight. The government actually has a helluva a lot more money at it's disposal today than it ever did in the '50s and '60s.
You may not like UserLinux, but Perens is out doing work to try to produce social change.
Is that an endorsement or an indictment?
Seriously, if your going to write code, then fucking write code. If you want to change the world, then run for fucking office.
Actually, I'd love to see Bruce Perens run for office. Watching yet another two-bit socialist going down in flames at the polls is about as much fun as you can have with your pants on.
Does anyone else think that Bruce Perens is becoming an irrelevant also-ran? It seems to me that he's better known for starting projects in a flurry of publicity that wind up as vaporware (User Linux anyone?)
Bruce Perens is what you'd call the Jesse Jackson of OS/FS. He spends most of his time and energy jumping in front the cameras, and trying to get in front of parades that have already left.
/I guess s/he wouldn't feel much different than any of the other human ethnic groups that were almost wiped out over the years, in almost all parts of the world.
Oh wonderful! Just what we need, another aggrieved minority suing the government for compensation!
Are you sure this is such a hot idea?
Probably plenty. Don't look now, but the crotch-monkey right is already starting to mobilize:
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050520/D8A70J0
Last time I checked, you vote for the people who choose how much money to take and choose what to use that money for. If you disagree, vote for someone else.
We did. So what are you complaining about?
Is Zeta based on BeOS code? Last I heard, BeOS was owned by Palm, and they had no plans to license it. Or is this a reverse engineered clone?
You want control turned over to an international body. OK, that sounds reasonable. But the UN? I mean... how about somebody with a little more tech savvy and a little less politics?
Exactly why should we cede control of the net to an international body?
If the UN had wanted control over the internet, they should have subsidized it's development.
They didn't. The US government did. Now that the rest of the world is deriving a benefit from that investment, the UN thinks they're entitled to tell us how it's going to be run.
Tell them to kiss our ass!
no I think the implication is that the pressure from the whacko-religious near-terrorist christian extremists would become to much to bear if the governament started patenting human-animal chimeras. It would errode the sacredicity of humanity by forcing them to move from their present all-or-nothing view humans, i.e. that thing god created first to an actual definition that would stand muster in a secular legal scope.
They'd sure flip if they got wind of an idea from one guy I heard of. He wants to genetically engineer half-human/half-simian sex slaves and market them under the trade names of Bimbonobo and Chimpanion. The day that happens watch the shit really hit the fan.
---
I expect the Religious Right will end up getting steam-rolled over the genetic engineering issue when the average inhabitant of Beijing is 7.5 feet tall, weighs 220 lb. all muscle and has an average IQ of 220. Either that, or Darwin will simply dispatch with them. The mental image of a zoo in Beijing with a specimen of a bible-thumping fundamentalist in a cage labeled "Moral-American Crotch-Monkey" and getting gawked at by a crowd of our hypothetical brilliant, 7.5 foot Beijingers (sp?) is just too funny for words.
Think of the dirty '30s dustbowl as being the norm, not an exception.
I'd think you'd be shooting in your pants over that one - what better excuse to bring back the New Deal?
Think of Europe having much colder winters because of the lack of a thermocline to drive the gulf stream currents.
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
This should keep me awake at night exactly - why?
Think of recurring global catastrophies that make the recent tidal wave look like "just another day".
And the next time one happens... try to be there!
Think of what we're handing our kids.
"For the children!"
Think - everyone said "don't worry, it won't happen in our lifetimes anyway."
I think they were wrong.
God! I sure hope so!