Back before my buddies and I turned 21, booze was too much trouble to acquire (have to find somebody to pull for you, pretend to like him/share with him/whatever, etc.)
I never had that problem. We always knew exactly which retailers didn't check ID -- or which ones did but wouldn't bother if you carried yourself well.
So, we typically just avoided the whole mess and sat around smoking weed. Those retailers never check ID.
We did that too;) And yeah, those guys don't check ID. The really sad thing is that the customer service is usually better than the gas station/grocery store anyway;)
Raising the drinking age to 21 is probably a good idea. Laws are supposed to benefit society. Reducing fetal alcohol syndrome and damage to the brains of our developing youth - you know, the future... well, it sounds like a good idea to me.
What does fetal alcohol syndrome have to do with the drinking age? And how can you realistically deny an adult who has reached the age of majority the right to purchase alcohol? I can vote and pay taxes but the state tells me I can't buy alcohol? You really think that's right?
MJ users are less likely to drink to excess (probably largely because it leads rapidly to vomiting when combined, as compared to drinking alone)
Where did you get that idea? I've never had a problem combining the two. Marijuana makes you less inclined to drink but it doesn't automatically make you sick if you attempt to drink while under the influence of weed. I've known quite a few people (myself included) who can combine the two to ridiculous excess without any issue. If anything, the pot makes it harder for you to throw up (that's one of the arguments for medical marijuana).
legalizing Marijuana would probably go further towards combating drunk driving than anything MADD ever did
In general (notwithstanding my previous paragraph) I would grant you this argument. Most of the stoners that I know drink very little alcohol. It's just not something that your typical marijuana smoker feels the need to do.
She was essentially irrational about it. I pointed out that possession and consumption of alcohol was (generally) not illegal
This is what kills me. We've become so obsessed with stopping "drunk drivers" that we've lost all rationality about this issue.
One of my favorite things is to see two or three police cars sitting outside the local pub. They find some excuse to pull over people who leave (dirty license plates being the favorite in winter -- summer it's usually something like "you forgot to signal") and give them a breath test. Anybody a hair over 0.08 is arrested and charged regardless of whether or not they are actually impaired.
Meanwhile the streets aren't being patrolled (all the cops are outside the bar), so anybody who got drink at home or at a friends house can almost always drive without being bothered -- even if they are so ridiculously drunk that they are swerving all over the road. Meanwhile other crimes aren't being deterred because there's no active police patrols until after last call -- the cops don't have the resources to patrol AND monitor every bar in town, so they opt to monitor the bars the overwhelming majority of the time.
The last DWI fatality that happened in my hometown was a 15 year old kid who was mowed down while walking home (on the sidewalk). The driver who hit him had three previous DWI convictions, was driving on a suspended license and had a BAC of 0.17. He was seen to have been swerving all over the road and two different drivers had actually reported him to the police before his accident. They didn't catch him in time because all of the on-duty patrol cars were again sitting outside the local pub. They didn't even bother to dispatch one of them when the reports came in about his car swerving all over the road. Guess the fact that some people consume alcohol outside of bars never crossed their mind?
"Shut up"? I'd go with "Fuck MADD". Seriously. An orginization that started for a fairly laudable purpose (combating drunk driving and assisting the victims of it) has turned into a neo-prohibitionist organization that spends as much time demonizing alcohol as it does fighting the problem of drunk driving. Even the original founder got fed up with the group and left. She was quoted as saying something like 'I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving'.
This is an orginization that encourages practices that are (IMHO) un-American. Practices like random police roadblocks (normally associated with military directorships), implied consent laws (5th amendment, what?) and my personal favorite: Getting the drinking age raised to 21. Gotta love the irony -- you can get married, join the military, sign a contract and borrow money from the bank -- but you can't legally purchase booze. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Besides which, you could make the argument that this is counterproductive in terms of reducing drinking -- prohibit something and you just make it that much more attractive for teenagers.
Recently I heard that they've come out in favor of mandatory ignition interlock systems for all automobiles -- not just as a punishment/deterrent for those previously convicted of DUI. Yeah, I should have to pay extra money for my car and blow into a tube every time I want to start it just because a small minority of people make stupid decisions and drive drunk.
Want some sanity on this issue? Take a look a the DUI positions of the National Motorist Association. Turns out there are ways to combat the problem of drunk driving that don't involve shredding our civil liberties or demonizing alcohol.
There comes a point where a few individuals obtain the power to destroy all life on Earth (i.e. the US President's football)
I find it highly unlikely that even a massive nuclear exchange would have the ability to "destroy all life on Earth". Hell, I find it unlikely that you could even exterminate the human race with such an exchange but I'll ignore that for now and say that you can for the sake of the argument.
Let's assume that we had enough nuclear weapons to create enough fallout/put enough dust in the atmosphere to destroy all higher forms of life. Even if we could do that something would survive somewhere. Bacteria under the ice caps or in the permafrost of the North, deep ocean lifeforms around hydrothermal vents, bacteria in the Antarctic lakes under 9,000 feet of ice, etc, etc. If you can accept the fact that life would survive somewhere then it's just a matter of waiting for the radiation levels to come down before sophisticated forms of life (vertebrates) could evolve again.
Some fission byproducts have pretty impressive half-lives on the scale of a human lifetime -- but on a geologic timescale they are pretty meaningless. Any dust thrown up into the atmosphere would eventually come back down. Sorry but I just don't think we have the power to wipe out all life on this planet -- it's survived much nastier disasters then anything we could cook up.
On the other hand, the Military Channel agrees with me on its "Top 10 Tanks". In it, various British, American, and French tank crewman from World War II were asked what tank they'd pick to be in if they had a choice, and they all said, "Tiger".
That's probably because they didn't have the experience that the German tankers did of sitting on the side of the road in a combat zone waiting for the repair crew to arrive;) Seriously, German units couldn't even complete a road march without having a couple of Tigers fall out with mechanical problems. I'd rather have a T-34 any day. Hell, I might even prefer to be in a Sherman than in a Tiger -- the Sherman isn't facing 5 to 1 odds, is a match for the early German tanks (which were always the bulk of the German forces, even towards the end) and isn't going to leave me stranded on the side of the road.
However, that usually resulted in a relatively small part of the tank being deadlined at any time, not the entire tank
If that "relatively small part" is your drive train and you can't move then is it really a "relatively small part"? And over-engineering has more drawbacks then just reliability -- a simpler design would have been easier to mass produce and would have delivered more tanks to the front lines.
And the history of the USSR, and the cyclic history of Russia, leaves me utterly saddened. I fear it is sliding into the depths again, with "Polonium-210" being Putin's not-too-subtle hint that he'll reach out and touch you even in England if you complain too much. With a half-life of 138 days, it's pretty damn obvious it was "state-sponsored".
I'm honestly not that concerned about Putin. I'm less then thrilled with his internal "reforms" but his goal seems to be making Russia into a Great Power again -- over the long run a more powerful/assertive Russia will serve as a useful balance/counterweight to a rising China.
The most important capital is people.
The USSR system wastes *people*. Over and over, in my original reply, I said that the Soviet way was, "We can always get more people using cheap, unskilled labor!".
Or as Stalin said, "The death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of a million people is a statistic." Stalin would know; he killed so many Ukranians that we don't know within a million how many died, but it's well over ten million. Stalin is directly responsible for nearly losing World War II because he did a paranoid purge of the professional officer corps right before the war.
I applaud your points, but I encourage you to consider that people matter the most.
I don't know why you keep emphasizing these points about Soviet disregard for human life. I never disputed them.
From the firemen who "volunteered" to go into Chernobyl to the Red Army troops at Stalingrad that didn't even have weapons (no, that scene in Enemy at the Gates wasn't all Hollywood -- that kind of crap did happen on the Eastern Front) -- the Soviets tended to solve a major problem by throwing bodies at it. And that's without even talking about Stalin's paranoid purges -- if the USSR had lost the Great Patriotic War it would have been entirely his fault, IMHO.
I still think it's a mistake to underestimate their engineering though. I seem to recall that we did much the same thing with the Japanese in the opening months of the Pacific War. They had some surprises up their sleeve though and we paid a heavy price for underestimating them. One wonders what surprises the Russians had waiting for us if the Cold War had ever turned into a real shooting match.....
Oh, please. If you want a tank, you go to Germany and ask for one. The Tiger was unmatched in WWII.
Is that why Germany won the war? Oh wait, they didn't;)
The Tiger might have been superior to the T-34 in a straight up comparison of armor/weaponry but the T-34 was a better overall tank. It was easier to produce, easier to maintain, easier to repair and generally more reliable. It also completely outclassed every single German tank when it was first introduced -- not a small feat considering the fact that it was the Germans who largely came up with the concept of armored warfare to begin with!
For all the grief that the Russians get for under-engineering the Germans in WW2 managed to do the exact opposite -- they over-engineered everything. Their designs for everything from tanks to field artillery tended to be more complicated than the equivalent Soviet/Allied designs. As a result their equipment was much more liable to breakdown and was harder to repair when it did. This was especially true for their tanks.
The Russians were, however, silly enough to make fleets of T-34's and T-60's and T-72's. All that treasure poured into making crap. Did you miss the Gulf War or something?
Did you miss World War Two or something? Those T-34s won the war for the Soviet Union. They were a great surprise to the Wehrmacht and practically invincible during the first few months of the war -- the German ground formations typically lacked the weapons to defeat their armor head-on. Had they been available in larger numbers at the outset it's likely that the history of the Eastern Front would have turned out quite differently.
Thousands were carved into scrap in a hundred hours. Their crews could not wait to get away from them, because they were (rightly) considered to be deathtraps.
Yes, because it's not like the Coalition had any other advantages, like total Air Supremacy, better training, night vision/IR equipment or anything like that.
I seriously doubt that there's one person in Washington DC today that has a tenth of that kind of vision.
Oh, there's a few people with that kind of vision. The only problem is that you have to get your vision past Congress and the President. Our Congress is so dysfunctional that they can't even hold a hearing about baseball without turning it into a partisan affair and our President.... well, let's not go there;)
I'm guessing that it'll take a Sputnik like shock to shake us out of our complacency. One only hopes that it isn't too late for us when it comes.....
Whether it's plane, subs, rockets etc, you can count on the Russians to come up with expensive shit which simply doesn't work reliably
That's not entirely fair. They've had their fair share of avoidable disasters due to flawed designs (*cough* Chernobyl *cough*) but they've also built some really impressive shit.
The T-34 was arguably the best tank of WW2. The R-36 (SS-18) ICBM was superior to any American missile (including the vaunted Peacekeeper) in many areas -- survivability, throw-weight, etc, etc. The R-73 (AA-11) air-to-air missile was at least a generation ahead of the equivalent NATO weapon (AIM-9L or AIM-9M) when it first came out.
We've generally beaten them in the electronics game (more success at miniaturization, more powerful computers, better software engineers), which probably makes our weapons/sensors more effective overall but it's a huge mistake to dismiss or underestimate Russian technology.
Just as a consideration, you should try to find the History Channel's documentary on Life After People [history.com]. It shows, rather dramatically, just how quickly technology fails when there's no one around to maintain it.
I saw it but I don't see how it's relevant to this discussion. It was an interesting show but the premise that all human beings instantly disappeared whilst leaving behind EVERYTHING seemed a bit stupid to me. Where did we go? Did everybody get raptured or something?
Some of the ideas seemed kind of far-fetched -- like the theory that we'd have "flying cats" (like flying squirrels) evolve as an adaptation to live in abandoned skyscrapers -- skyscrapers they admitted would be coming down within 100-200 years (200 years is enough time for natural selection to produce a flying cat and enough time for that cat to pass his genes on???).
Still, I'll grant you that it was kind of interesting to see how quickly nature reasserts itself and swallows up our civilization without us around to beat it back.
Also, while we would have guns and knives, what are we using them on? Each other?
My point was that we'd have access to tools that our ancestors lacked -- ancestors who somehow managed to survive the last super-volcanic eruption. A knife has a lot more uses then killing things -- why do you think that a decent knife is always included in survival kits?
Unless, as the original article indicates, you're able to find some area that's less affected, or unless we can put together some nuclear-powered underground complex with a massive hydroponics garden in an EXTREMELY short period of time, the human race is screwed.
I'm sorry but I don't agree. I've you accepted the link between Toba and this population bottleneck then obviously humanity did survive the last super-volcanic eruption. If you accept that then I don't see how you can make the claim that we wouldn't be able to survive a similar eruption. I don't think the survivors would be listening to iPods but I really don't think it's unreasonable to assume that any of the things I mentioned would survive. Is a super-volcanic eruption somehow going to wipe out our knowledge of germs and how to avoid spreading them (infection control) or the formula for gunpowder?
I'm sorry but I'm not going to bet against the most adaptable species that's ever walked on this planet. We are pretty scrappy resourceful little mammals.
I beleieve that from mining to decommisioning the nuclear cycle as a whole causes far greater toxic emissions than the oil cycle, uyp to 70 per cent
Toxic emissions of what exactly?
Do you know if these emissions are offset by the gretaer efficiensy or safety of the nuclear option?
Well, if you are talking about the energy required to dig uranium out of the ground, then I could point out that you'd have those same energy requirements (presumably carbon-based fuels run all of that mining equipment) digging coal out of the ground.
I don't think fixing it is really an option, I fear all we can do at this point is adapt to the change and hope that technology continues facilitating our ability to feed ourselves
I disagree. We'll have to endure some level of climate change (even if we could completely cut off C02 emissions today this would still be the case) but I think an aggressive move away from carbon based energy sources will moderate some of the worst impacts of climate change and put us on the road to recovery that much sooner.
If I was the benevolent dictator for life of planet Earth I would start by embracing nuclear power. There is no reason why we couldn't completely replace coal fired power plants with nuclear plants in a decade or so. Nuclear power is a wonderful resource for base load applications -- other power sources (renewables, hydro, etc) could take over peak power production.
Once you have a carbon neutral source of electrical production then you can start looking into 'energy storage' schemes for mobile/transportation applications (the hydrogen economy, fuel cells, etc, etc) that aren't currently as useful since they require energy input, the main source of which is currently carbon based.
All that said I have very little faith in the ability of our various political systems to make any of that happen. *sigh*
How serious is the event? How long is the aftermath? Decades? Longer? How long can you live without food?
Valid points, still:
With the vast majority of the human race extinct and with no support structure, just how much technology will you really have?
I'll go out on a limb and say "more than our ancestors did 75,000 years ago". You don't need a huge technological/population base to build basic tools (the knife comes to mind) or weapons (guns). Even if the event was serious enough to push us back into a pre-industrial state we'd still be light-years ahead of where our ancestors were 75,000 years ago.
Consider that there are many concepts that were unknown until fairly recently (random example: infection control) that don't require a technological base to be completely effective. Consider the fact that basic medicines and vaccines (the smallpox vaccine has been around for over 200 years) don't require a modern technological base to produce either. Sanitation is another concept that works without modern technology. All of these are things that our stone-age ancestors had no access to and no concept of, yet they still managed to survive such an event (super volcanic eruption).
Waiting for a technological quick-fix is really foolish in my opinion
I didn't say I was "waiting for" a technological fix. I said that throughout history technology has continually improved and allowed this planet to support a higher population of human beings than might otherwise be possible.
With regards to the specific issue of overpopulation (which is what I was responding to -- I don't see how you brought the climate into this discussion) I'm optimistic enough to assume that there will be some sort of technological solution. And as many people already pointed out -- hunger is mainly caused by distribution problems, not production problems. There are more than enough calories going around to support the human race -- some parts of the human race can't afford to buy them. That's an economic issue -- not a capacity issue.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is humans who are impacting the climate
Where did I say that we weren't? I know it seems popular around here to dispute climate change (which I find odd given the number of people around here that also bemoan the War on Science, but there you go) but I'm not part of that group of people. I think that climate change is the biggest challenge our generation is going to face and we desperately need leadership that is both aware of this and able to make fixing it a top priority.
Whatever their physical fitness level, they probably had what it took upstairs.
That's pretty much the only reason we have survived. Physical fitness is helpful but let's face it -- even the most fit human being in the World isn't much of a match for a saber-toothed tiger (or any number of modern day predators) without the benefit of this. It's pretty amazing when you think about it -- in spite of all the negatives (how many other animals routinely die giving birth?) associated with the human brain we still survived and clawed our way up the food chain.
And without any concept of a nation-state to organize them
Did we really have a concept of the nation-state back in the time of the Neanderthals? That example is probably more applicable to the various conflicts between sects of homo sapiens -- i.e: the conquest of the New World, Roman conquests, etc, etc.
In fact, the 70,000 year old "near-extinction event" discussed in the article ties rather neatly into the massive Toba erruption [wikipedia.org] that occurred in Sumatra, Indonesia right around 67,500 to 75,500 years ago.
What makes you think that a super-volcano could wipe out the human race? If you accept the link between Toba and the population bottleneck than obviously the human race was able to (barely) survive. If we were able to survive it without the benefit of modern technology then why wouldn't be able to survive a similar event today?
Millions (billions?) would die but the whole human race? That seems like a stretch to me. Notwithstanding technology, we have at least twothings the dinosaurs didn't.....
Though I personally believe we'll still end ourselves before nature does (over population is so much more of a threat)
How would overpopulation end us? Even if you aren't optimistic enough to assume that technology will provide a solution (it always has in the past -- think you could support modern day population density with the agricultural technology of ancient Rome? Hint: You couldn't), how will overpopulation end the human race?
The absolute worst case scenario that I could envision is a global war for resources that the poorer/less-well-armed nations would lose. Even in that scenario I don't see the end of the human race -- it's unlikely that even a global nuclear exchange would end the human race, though it would certainly set us back a few centuries.
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I never had that problem. We always knew exactly which retailers didn't check ID -- or which ones did but wouldn't bother if you carried yourself well.
So, we typically just avoided the whole mess and sat around smoking weed. Those retailers never check ID.We did that too ;) And yeah, those guys don't check ID. The really sad thing is that the customer service is usually better than the gas station/grocery store anyway ;)
What does fetal alcohol syndrome have to do with the drinking age? And how can you realistically deny an adult who has reached the age of majority the right to purchase alcohol? I can vote and pay taxes but the state tells me I can't buy alcohol? You really think that's right?
MJ users are less likely to drink to excess (probably largely because it leads rapidly to vomiting when combined, as compared to drinking alone)Where did you get that idea? I've never had a problem combining the two. Marijuana makes you less inclined to drink but it doesn't automatically make you sick if you attempt to drink while under the influence of weed. I've known quite a few people (myself included) who can combine the two to ridiculous excess without any issue. If anything, the pot makes it harder for you to throw up (that's one of the arguments for medical marijuana).
legalizing Marijuana would probably go further towards combating drunk driving than anything MADD ever didIn general (notwithstanding my previous paragraph) I would grant you this argument. Most of the stoners that I know drink very little alcohol. It's just not something that your typical marijuana smoker feels the need to do.
This is what kills me. We've become so obsessed with stopping "drunk drivers" that we've lost all rationality about this issue.
One of my favorite things is to see two or three police cars sitting outside the local pub. They find some excuse to pull over people who leave (dirty license plates being the favorite in winter -- summer it's usually something like "you forgot to signal") and give them a breath test. Anybody a hair over 0.08 is arrested and charged regardless of whether or not they are actually impaired.
Meanwhile the streets aren't being patrolled (all the cops are outside the bar), so anybody who got drink at home or at a friends house can almost always drive without being bothered -- even if they are so ridiculously drunk that they are swerving all over the road. Meanwhile other crimes aren't being deterred because there's no active police patrols until after last call -- the cops don't have the resources to patrol AND monitor every bar in town, so they opt to monitor the bars the overwhelming majority of the time.
The last DWI fatality that happened in my hometown was a 15 year old kid who was mowed down while walking home (on the sidewalk). The driver who hit him had three previous DWI convictions, was driving on a suspended license and had a BAC of 0.17. He was seen to have been swerving all over the road and two different drivers had actually reported him to the police before his accident. They didn't catch him in time because all of the on-duty patrol cars were again sitting outside the local pub. They didn't even bother to dispatch one of them when the reports came in about his car swerving all over the road. Guess the fact that some people consume alcohol outside of bars never crossed their mind?
Yeah, our DWI policies make sense.....
"Shut up"? I'd go with "Fuck MADD". Seriously. An orginization that started for a fairly laudable purpose (combating drunk driving and assisting the victims of it) has turned into a neo-prohibitionist organization that spends as much time demonizing alcohol as it does fighting the problem of drunk driving. Even the original founder got fed up with the group and left. She was quoted as saying something like 'I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving'.
This is an orginization that encourages practices that are (IMHO) un-American. Practices like random police roadblocks (normally associated with military directorships), implied consent laws (5th amendment, what?) and my personal favorite: Getting the drinking age raised to 21. Gotta love the irony -- you can get married, join the military, sign a contract and borrow money from the bank -- but you can't legally purchase booze. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Besides which, you could make the argument that this is counterproductive in terms of reducing drinking -- prohibit something and you just make it that much more attractive for teenagers.
Recently I heard that they've come out in favor of mandatory ignition interlock systems for all automobiles -- not just as a punishment/deterrent for those previously convicted of DUI. Yeah, I should have to pay extra money for my car and blow into a tube every time I want to start it just because a small minority of people make stupid decisions and drive drunk.
Want some sanity on this issue? Take a look a the DUI positions of the National Motorist Association. Turns out there are ways to combat the problem of drunk driving that don't involve shredding our civil liberties or demonizing alcohol.
Would that make us the Shadows or the Vorlons? ;) Or Lorien?
I find it highly unlikely that even a massive nuclear exchange would have the ability to "destroy all life on Earth". Hell, I find it unlikely that you could even exterminate the human race with such an exchange but I'll ignore that for now and say that you can for the sake of the argument.
Let's assume that we had enough nuclear weapons to create enough fallout/put enough dust in the atmosphere to destroy all higher forms of life. Even if we could do that something would survive somewhere. Bacteria under the ice caps or in the permafrost of the North, deep ocean lifeforms around hydrothermal vents, bacteria in the Antarctic lakes under 9,000 feet of ice, etc, etc. If you can accept the fact that life would survive somewhere then it's just a matter of waiting for the radiation levels to come down before sophisticated forms of life (vertebrates) could evolve again.
Some fission byproducts have pretty impressive half-lives on the scale of a human lifetime -- but on a geologic timescale they are pretty meaningless. Any dust thrown up into the atmosphere would eventually come back down. Sorry but I just don't think we have the power to wipe out all life on this planet -- it's survived much nastier disasters then anything we could cook up.
I thought it was around 5,000-6,000 years old? Are you telling me that I was misinformed???
That's because she'd kick his ass if he tried ;) Seriously, have you seen Bill Gates? ;)
That's probably because they didn't have the experience that the German tankers did of sitting on the side of the road in a combat zone waiting for the repair crew to arrive ;) Seriously, German units couldn't even complete a road march without having a couple of Tigers fall out with mechanical problems. I'd rather have a T-34 any day. Hell, I might even prefer to be in a Sherman than in a Tiger -- the Sherman isn't facing 5 to 1 odds, is a match for the early German tanks (which were always the bulk of the German forces, even towards the end) and isn't going to leave me stranded on the side of the road.
However, that usually resulted in a relatively small part of the tank being deadlined at any time, not the entire tankIf that "relatively small part" is your drive train and you can't move then is it really a "relatively small part"? And over-engineering has more drawbacks then just reliability -- a simpler design would have been easier to mass produce and would have delivered more tanks to the front lines.
And the history of the USSR, and the cyclic history of Russia, leaves me utterly saddened. I fear it is sliding into the depths again, with "Polonium-210" being Putin's not-too-subtle hint that he'll reach out and touch you even in England if you complain too much. With a half-life of 138 days, it's pretty damn obvious it was "state-sponsored".I'm honestly not that concerned about Putin. I'm less then thrilled with his internal "reforms" but his goal seems to be making Russia into a Great Power again -- over the long run a more powerful/assertive Russia will serve as a useful balance/counterweight to a rising China.
The most important capital is people. The USSR system wastes *people*. Over and over, in my original reply, I said that the Soviet way was, "We can always get more people using cheap, unskilled labor!". Or as Stalin said, "The death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of a million people is a statistic." Stalin would know; he killed so many Ukranians that we don't know within a million how many died, but it's well over ten million. Stalin is directly responsible for nearly losing World War II because he did a paranoid purge of the professional officer corps right before the war. I applaud your points, but I encourage you to consider that people matter the most.I don't know why you keep emphasizing these points about Soviet disregard for human life. I never disputed them.
From the firemen who "volunteered" to go into Chernobyl to the Red Army troops at Stalingrad that didn't even have weapons (no, that scene in Enemy at the Gates wasn't all Hollywood -- that kind of crap did happen on the Eastern Front) -- the Soviets tended to solve a major problem by throwing bodies at it. And that's without even talking about Stalin's paranoid purges -- if the USSR had lost the Great Patriotic War it would have been entirely his fault, IMHO.
I still think it's a mistake to underestimate their engineering though. I seem to recall that we did much the same thing with the Japanese in the opening months of the Pacific War. They had some surprises up their sleeve though and we paid a heavy price for underestimating them. One wonders what surprises the Russians had waiting for us if the Cold War had ever turned into a real shooting match.....
Is that why Germany won the war? Oh wait, they didn't ;)
The Tiger might have been superior to the T-34 in a straight up comparison of armor/weaponry but the T-34 was a better overall tank. It was easier to produce, easier to maintain, easier to repair and generally more reliable. It also completely outclassed every single German tank when it was first introduced -- not a small feat considering the fact that it was the Germans who largely came up with the concept of armored warfare to begin with!
For all the grief that the Russians get for under-engineering the Germans in WW2 managed to do the exact opposite -- they over-engineered everything. Their designs for everything from tanks to field artillery tended to be more complicated than the equivalent Soviet/Allied designs. As a result their equipment was much more liable to breakdown and was harder to repair when it did. This was especially true for their tanks.
The Russians were, however, silly enough to make fleets of T-34's and T-60's and T-72's. All that treasure poured into making crap. Did you miss the Gulf War or something?Did you miss World War Two or something? Those T-34s won the war for the Soviet Union. They were a great surprise to the Wehrmacht and practically invincible during the first few months of the war -- the German ground formations typically lacked the weapons to defeat their armor head-on. Had they been available in larger numbers at the outset it's likely that the history of the Eastern Front would have turned out quite differently.
Thousands were carved into scrap in a hundred hours. Their crews could not wait to get away from them, because they were (rightly) considered to be deathtraps.Yes, because it's not like the Coalition had any other advantages, like total Air Supremacy, better training, night vision/IR equipment or anything like that.
What else would you call the lack of a containment building?
Oh, there's a few people with that kind of vision. The only problem is that you have to get your vision past Congress and the President. Our Congress is so dysfunctional that they can't even hold a hearing about baseball without turning it into a partisan affair and our President.... well, let's not go there ;)
I'm guessing that it'll take a Sputnik like shock to shake us out of our complacency. One only hopes that it isn't too late for us when it comes.....
That's not entirely fair. They've had their fair share of avoidable disasters due to flawed designs (*cough* Chernobyl *cough*) but they've also built some really impressive shit.
The T-34 was arguably the best tank of WW2. The R-36 (SS-18) ICBM was superior to any American missile (including the vaunted Peacekeeper) in many areas -- survivability, throw-weight, etc, etc. The R-73 (AA-11) air-to-air missile was at least a generation ahead of the equivalent NATO weapon (AIM-9L or AIM-9M) when it first came out.
We've generally beaten them in the electronics game (more success at miniaturization, more powerful computers, better software engineers), which probably makes our weapons/sensors more effective overall but it's a huge mistake to dismiss or underestimate Russian technology.
Sorry, we won't let it happen again ;)
I saw it but I don't see how it's relevant to this discussion. It was an interesting show but the premise that all human beings instantly disappeared whilst leaving behind EVERYTHING seemed a bit stupid to me. Where did we go? Did everybody get raptured or something?
Some of the ideas seemed kind of far-fetched -- like the theory that we'd have "flying cats" (like flying squirrels) evolve as an adaptation to live in abandoned skyscrapers -- skyscrapers they admitted would be coming down within 100-200 years (200 years is enough time for natural selection to produce a flying cat and enough time for that cat to pass his genes on???).
Still, I'll grant you that it was kind of interesting to see how quickly nature reasserts itself and swallows up our civilization without us around to beat it back.
Also, while we would have guns and knives, what are we using them on? Each other?My point was that we'd have access to tools that our ancestors lacked -- ancestors who somehow managed to survive the last super-volcanic eruption. A knife has a lot more uses then killing things -- why do you think that a decent knife is always included in survival kits?
Unless, as the original article indicates, you're able to find some area that's less affected, or unless we can put together some nuclear-powered underground complex with a massive hydroponics garden in an EXTREMELY short period of time, the human race is screwed.I'm sorry but I don't agree. I've you accepted the link between Toba and this population bottleneck then obviously humanity did survive the last super-volcanic eruption. If you accept that then I don't see how you can make the claim that we wouldn't be able to survive a similar eruption. I don't think the survivors would be listening to iPods but I really don't think it's unreasonable to assume that any of the things I mentioned would survive. Is a super-volcanic eruption somehow going to wipe out our knowledge of germs and how to avoid spreading them (infection control) or the formula for gunpowder?
I'm sorry but I'm not going to bet against the most adaptable species that's ever walked on this planet. We are pretty scrappy resourceful little mammals.
Toxic emissions of what exactly?
Do you know if these emissions are offset by the gretaer efficiensy or safety of the nuclear option?Well, if you are talking about the energy required to dig uranium out of the ground, then I could point out that you'd have those same energy requirements (presumably carbon-based fuels run all of that mining equipment) digging coal out of the ground.
I disagree. We'll have to endure some level of climate change (even if we could completely cut off C02 emissions today this would still be the case) but I think an aggressive move away from carbon based energy sources will moderate some of the worst impacts of climate change and put us on the road to recovery that much sooner.
If I was the benevolent dictator for life of planet Earth I would start by embracing nuclear power. There is no reason why we couldn't completely replace coal fired power plants with nuclear plants in a decade or so. Nuclear power is a wonderful resource for base load applications -- other power sources (renewables, hydro, etc) could take over peak power production.
Once you have a carbon neutral source of electrical production then you can start looking into 'energy storage' schemes for mobile/transportation applications (the hydrogen economy, fuel cells, etc, etc) that aren't currently as useful since they require energy input, the main source of which is currently carbon based.
All that said I have very little faith in the ability of our various political systems to make any of that happen. *sigh*
Valid points, still:
With the vast majority of the human race extinct and with no support structure, just how much technology will you really have?I'll go out on a limb and say "more than our ancestors did 75,000 years ago". You don't need a huge technological/population base to build basic tools (the knife comes to mind) or weapons (guns). Even if the event was serious enough to push us back into a pre-industrial state we'd still be light-years ahead of where our ancestors were 75,000 years ago.
Consider that there are many concepts that were unknown until fairly recently (random example: infection control) that don't require a technological base to be completely effective. Consider the fact that basic medicines and vaccines (the smallpox vaccine has been around for over 200 years) don't require a modern technological base to produce either. Sanitation is another concept that works without modern technology. All of these are things that our stone-age ancestors had no access to and no concept of, yet they still managed to survive such an event (super volcanic eruption).
I didn't say I was "waiting for" a technological fix. I said that throughout history technology has continually improved and allowed this planet to support a higher population of human beings than might otherwise be possible.
With regards to the specific issue of overpopulation (which is what I was responding to -- I don't see how you brought the climate into this discussion) I'm optimistic enough to assume that there will be some sort of technological solution. And as many people already pointed out -- hunger is mainly caused by distribution problems, not production problems. There are more than enough calories going around to support the human race -- some parts of the human race can't afford to buy them. That's an economic issue -- not a capacity issue.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is humans who are impacting the climateWhere did I say that we weren't? I know it seems popular around here to dispute climate change (which I find odd given the number of people around here that also bemoan the War on Science, but there you go) but I'm not part of that group of people. I think that climate change is the biggest challenge our generation is going to face and we desperately need leadership that is both aware of this and able to make fixing it a top priority.
That's pretty much the only reason we have survived. Physical fitness is helpful but let's face it -- even the most fit human being in the World isn't much of a match for a saber-toothed tiger (or any number of modern day predators) without the benefit of this. It's pretty amazing when you think about it -- in spite of all the negatives (how many other animals routinely die giving birth?) associated with the human brain we still survived and clawed our way up the food chain.
And without any concept of a nation-state to organize themDid we really have a concept of the nation-state back in the time of the Neanderthals? That example is probably more applicable to the various conflicts between sects of homo sapiens -- i.e: the conquest of the New World, Roman conquests, etc, etc.
Good theory, but the United States wasn't around back then ;)
(Yep, that's gonna piss some people off ;)
That's why I've stocked up on tin-foil hats ;)
What makes you think that a super-volcano could wipe out the human race? If you accept the link between Toba and the population bottleneck than obviously the human race was able to (barely) survive. If we were able to survive it without the benefit of modern technology then why wouldn't be able to survive a similar event today?
Millions (billions?) would die but the whole human race? That seems like a stretch to me. Notwithstanding technology, we have at least two things the dinosaurs didn't.....
Uhh, where'd you hear that about the United States?
How would overpopulation end us? Even if you aren't optimistic enough to assume that technology will provide a solution (it always has in the past -- think you could support modern day population density with the agricultural technology of ancient Rome? Hint: You couldn't), how will overpopulation end the human race?
The absolute worst case scenario that I could envision is a global war for resources that the poorer/less-well-armed nations would lose. Even in that scenario I don't see the end of the human race -- it's unlikely that even a global nuclear exchange would end the human race, though it would certainly set us back a few centuries.