AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place, But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch; They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
- Rudyard Kipling
If more people had read and understood Kipling's poem and heeded his warning, the US and the world would not be in such a perilous predicament that threatens the lives and freedom of everyone on the planet.
Alas, alas...
The US Federal Reserve has borrowed all it can against US assets and the gold that other nations have on deposit with the Fed. They have sold all the gold that they still have outstanding loans against, including all the gold that all the various nations entrusted to the Federal Reserve.
The details surrounding the recent partial "repatriation" of German Bundesbank gold (they couldn't even make the first installment payment in full) illustrates this. The US Federal Reserve makes Bernie Madoff look like a 3-card Monty scammer.
As soon as the awareness sinks in with other foreign/international banks and organizations that all the gold they placed in trust with the US has been quietly sold, the US Dollar is done. Cue the US economic collapse and rioting, food shortages, starvation, death, and destruction.
So this Jefferson and Franklin guy, in their wide traveling I assume they visited In and Out, assessed mass transit systems, really thorough reviewed the modern Industrial food distribution system for 6 billion people.
Irrelevant.
These are universal principles of humanity and the government that humanity creates regardless of and independent from the tools, infrastructure, or technology existing at the time or the type of political ideology in control.
The principles they espouse were true in the days of Plato, they were true during the US revolutionary war, and they will be true for as long as people are recognizably human. They are principles built around the basic nature of humans. That has not changed for over 10 thousand years and will likely be little different in another 10 thousand years.
If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. - Thomas Jefferson
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. - Thomas Jefferson
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. - Benjamin Franklin
We can either have an entitlement society like the one we have in the US now, or we can have freedom.
John Spartan: [to machine on wall after finding out that they no longer use toilet paper] Thanks a lot you shit-brained, fuck-faced, ball breaking, duck fucking pain in the ass.
Moral Statute Machine: John Spartan, you are fined five credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute.
John Spartan: [grabbing the tickets] So much for the seashells. See you in a few minutes.
So now...hackers will not only steal my identity, they will steal my vote.
Nah, the votes will belong to the NSA.
If this type of "voting" becomes widely implemented, the pro-NSA politicians won't even have to pay lip-service to their electorates' wishes any longer in order to be elected/re-elected. Campaign ads might start looking more like a "Tarrlytons" billboard from "Idiocracy".
In all fairness, there may be some food handling safety issues involved with some of those.
Excuse me? Bigger "issues" than starvation or eating garbage out of a dumpster? If I were starving, I'd risk a bout of diarrhea to save my life.
"Issues" for whom, exactly? None for a starving person. But, I guess it's better that some number of people starve rather than create "issues" for politicians & bureaucrats, eh?
Well, if you're homeless and starving, I suppose you could just kill a politician or bureaucrat and go to jail to get fed. Eventually there will be very few politicians and bureaucrats left to enact and enforce laws and regulations like the ones in question, so it's a self-solving problem done that way.
I generally do not like the idea of trophy hunting, but in some states excess game can be donated to any meat processor, who will process and package it for donation to those having problems putting food on the table. I believe Texas has such a program, but I don't know if this place is involved in it.
Yes, there *was* a program for hunters to donate their game to feed the hungry. The ever-helpful government stepped in and ended that.
The homeless shelter providing the venison-including meals does not receive any government assistance or taxpayer money. It is self-sufficient.
There are new laws & regulations being passed/implemented by those in government across the US aimed at halting private citizens, churches, etc from feeding the hungry:
With the US middle class disappearing and poverty, homelessness, and hunger skyrocketing, it seems like the government (both (R) and (D)) wants to play "Hunger Games" and use starvation as a tool of control.
I'm certainly reassured that government bureaucrats and politicians being in charge of everyones' health care will be a good thing.
It's not clear that these obviously looked like musical instruments to a person who isn't accustomed to seeing various kinds of flutes. Bundle of reeds with notches in them. Customs probably thought they were bongs.
What is clear is that ICE inspectors didn't give a flute.
They were worried about the bamboo being capable of taking root and growing, but a rooted flute is hard to toot.
Lawyers and judges are clearly overrated. Any opinion is as good as any other.
Everything that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mussolini, and Hitler did to their respective peoples was "legal".
Appeal to authority fails.
The founders placed the ultimate responsibility for determining the constitutionality of laws/acts and other actions/policies of the government in the hands of the people.
The US is in a state of "cold" civil war, with the Federal government on one side, and the people on the other. It hasn't gotten to the point of open warfare...yet. However, given the unconstitutional and authoritarian/fascist path that those in the Federal government seem determined to pursue, a domestic shooting war appears inevitable.
How, you may ask, can one shoot the women and children of government leaders? You just don't lead 'em as much. War is hell.
Interestingly AP points out that 'Officials say data is not kept to determine if the cameras are driving down crime.'
If they kept such data around, somebody might try to halt the corrupt-politicians/connected-crony-contractor gravy train by publicizing the fact that it does not fulfill it's officially-stated purpose.
Not that halting it would happen just because of massive corruption being exposed. One has only to look at the example set by the Rape-A-Scan corruption debacle. The government basically reacted to being caught with "fuck you".
Been a lot of that from the government lately regardless of which political party is in power. Obviously, they are progressively worried less and less about the reaction of the people as time passes and their power, reach, and control grows. That's not good.
"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When people fear the government, there is tyranny." - Some old colonial dude that never even owned a computer or smartphone.
Its a very sad state in the world that any article - even those who not even talk about global warmning - get dragged into that flame war by the deniers.
So you're saying that the sarcasm-dripping very first post under this article by EvilSS...
The Big Question Is...
How can I use this to continue to deny global warming is caused by man? Cable-news fed minds want to know!
...Was a "denier" post?
Do you have a pair of the peril-sensitive as well as the reality-distorting type?
And most humorous of all, a post that is pure flamebait and just plain wrong is modded "+5 Insightful"?
Priceless.
And people wonder why the aliens haven't made contact.
That is happening inside of the atmosphere, not inside of the earth crust.
Heat energy produced by the flexing of the crust along with that coming from the core propagates by conduction and radiation, including to the seas and the atmosphere, and eventually radiates into space. Think about your point about the crust of the Earth flexing approximately two feet from the moon's tidal gravity pull. That's a lot of heat energy being generated! Where do you think it goes, hmm? Does it just stay there?
Everything is connected together. Everything affects everything else. Earth's climate is just one tiny, tiny part of something like a giant, almost infinitely-complex cosmic Rube Goldberg machine, where each step breaks down sets of interdependent systems into more subsets of interdependent systems, turtles all the way down.
Heat from the Earth is critical to making the climate habitable. Earth would be a snowball if the core was cold. That would also mean no more magnetic field to prevent the surface from being irradiated and the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere in a handful of centuries.
The "moon" Europa on the other hand is heated by the gravity of the "planet" Jupiter. That is a slight difference.
Only in scale and ratio. Europa also does the same to Jupiter, except Jupiter is so massive Europa's tidal forces are tiny. If Earth's moon spun faster than the period of its' orbit, it would experience tidal flexing as well. Heck, there might even be some mostly-dormant moon-volcanoes for Dr. Evil to build new lairs in.
Anyone got enough string to wrap around the moon a couple times so we can all give a good tug? Maybe if we utilized all the dental floss that Austin Powers never used...?
Sure, as the moon does exactly what to warm or cool the earth?
Let me introduce you to the concept of tidal forces and their effect causing significant heat as as the mass of a planetary body, especially the crust, flexes in response.
Check out Europa and the Jovian tidal forces that generate enough heat energy to keep water liquid that far from the sun, and even cause huge geysers, for an example.
Hm, strange as a matter of coincident I had checked that yesterday. Nearly burned my fingers, damn hot down there. Now as you mention it, I checked the rotation of the core again. I see no difference.
We are actually becoming quite good at being able to analyze and gather data from the passage of shock waves through materials, thanks in large part to military-driven research.
We are just beginning to understand what lies far beneath our feet. In fact, they've relatively recently come up with an almost entirely new structural opposing-spins model for the inner and outer cores.
Here are a couple of articles briefly describing it.
Now, where do you suppose all that convection is eventually transferring all that heat energy to? Heck, that's almost an entirely separate climate system in itself which we have extremely little understanding of.
Are you saying that we know and understand enough about this to safely rule it out of climate models?
Look, we simply have not been around to collect enough data or advance our understanding enough about the myriads of systems and even basic structure of the planet to make reliable predictions. The only prediction we can make with certainty is that climate will change on the planet. Anything more is an educated guess, at best.
Humans should be concentrating on becoming a space-faring species that can concentrate most of it's energy collection/generation and resource collection and processing off-planet, along with self-sustaining colonies, possibly either space habitats at Earth/moon La Grange points or on Mars or elsewhere.
The hoarding mentality that would have humans increasingly restricted in their energy and resource consumption is based on assuming that we must continue to only exploit the resources here on Earth and that humans will never live independently off of Earth, nor provide energy or resources to humans on Earth from off-planet.
If you truly want to be "green", push for full-on private and commercial exploitation of space and the establishment of colonies with the goal of eventual self-sufficiency. This will do more to eliminate the negative effects of humans on the Earth in a permanent way than anything else (short of killing ourselves and/or returning to hunter-gatherer level) we could possibly do.
There's no point accounting for Milankovitch cycles [wikipedia.org] unless you're simulating climate across at least several thousand years. The cycles are so long that they have negligible impact on simulations of less than a thousand years.
They can't even create models that reliably track with the little climate data we have for the last several thousand years.
Now you expect them to predict to a much more precise degree climate across a mere thousand years or less? That's the equivalent in geological-climate-cycle terms to the argument that short term weather has nothing to do with long term climate.
There are many major contributors to climate change that we simply don't understand sufficiently nor have enough data about to be able to calculate their influences with sufficient accuracy and reliability to make it something that should be cause for inflicting by government force major hardships and condemnation to poverty and suffering for billions, and the stagnation of the progress of human civilization.
There are LOTS of things "left". In fact there are so many variables, creating so much "noise", than any "signal" from AGW has been extremely difficult to detect (and indeed, might not even exist).
One thing I'm not aware that any of the models have accounted for is "wobble" in the Earth's orbital axis-tilt, nor, come to think of it, slight variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun. The slowly-enlarging orbit of the moon and the accompanying lessening of tidal forces would also have to play some role as well.
There's also the reported slowing of the spin of the Earth's iron core, which produces Earth's magnetic field.
You're also correct that a mere 1,000 years of data is orders of magnitude too tiny a sample to make any sort of predictions with any credible/meaningful percentage of assurance they are correct.
No amount of software modeling wizardry or scientific genius can make up for having insufficient data. "I'm sorry Captain, we have insufficient data at this time."
The problem is that this therapy tends to erase all memories. It is a very blunt instrument, just slightly better than a lobotomy.
From "Future News":
Scientists examining satellite views of Earth announced yesterday that they have begun noticing a pattern where the lights all across the US suddenly dim right after each new Snowden data release and publicized ACA-related government failure. Some are attempting to tie this with system instabilities surrounding the recently government-mandated-under-ACA-2.0 brain implants.
When later asked for additional details, the scientists were quoted as replying; "What announcement?".
Just as much as I believe that Nigerian Prince's nephew's super deal for helping him get funds out of the country.
C'mon, RSA guys. I know you're pretty butt-hurt about this revelation from the Snowden release. Heck, I can even understand that you guys may well have received an "offer you can't refuse" from the NSA, et al.
You'd be much better off playing that angle, rather than attempt a laughably-preposterous and totally unbelievable denial. The denial gets you no sympathy or possible assistance out of your situation at all from the public, only hatred, vitriol, and the ends of many of your careers.
Remember that when making deals with the Empire, Darth has a nasty habit of "altering the deal". Though you "pray" he "doesn't alter it further", it never fails to eventually happen. Neville Chamberlain, 'nuff said.
It seems, lately, that there is a clearer-than-ever delineation between legality and enforceability. If our government commits an illegal act, who is able to enforce it? Who's able to hold them accountable? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that question.
The answer to your question is the same answer that's included in the Constitution, the same answer that's always been the ultimate answer to all out-of-control governments.
You. The citizens.
You and others that would be willing to put your lives on the line when all other options have been shown to be worthless/ineffective, to pick up a sniper rifle, build an IED, make Molotov cocktails, organize and plan, and target the criminal leaders and take them out..
There are still a few peaceful options left to try yet, like the recent push for a convention of States to amend the Constitution to rein in the Federal government.
But of course, that might disturb your established biases and world-view.
Congress has abrogated their duties and obligations by creating Federal agencies, departments, etc and transferring the ability to make laws and/or regulations with the power of law, which is prima facia un-Constitutional on it's face. The President thinks that he has the power to decide what laws and what parts he'll enforce and when, effectively bypassing a large portion of Congress' powers and checks completely.
Congress is no longer an effective check on expansion of Federal scope and power. It has become a club for career politicians who only want to increase their power, wealth, and control while using the power of the government and their position in it to make certain they remain in office, often for decades. It no longer represents the people or the best interests of the nation.
The US is on the ragged edge of an economic and social collapse. The government is the source of the problem, therefor cannot, is incapable of, and has no real will to fix the problems it has created. It's now up to the citizens to take action. If you've got a better idea, get up and do something instead of kibitzing on what others who actually take action do.
They don't. There hasn't been a Zero attack since 1945. That's how effective the NSA's program has been!
Well, not sure which side of "effective" this puts the NSA, but the disinformation campaign to lead people to think they've eliminated all the Zeros seems to be at least somewhat effective.
Just remember, under the Old Regime, man oppressed man. Under the New Regime, they reversed that...
Agreed, in that both mainstream US political parties are nearly identical when it comes to screwing over US citizens. It's only the precise manner of implementation and rates at which individual liberty is lost that are up for debate.
I want to know what the hell pretext the people were pulled over for in the first place.
If you're talking about the Texas incident, they simply pulled a couple of squad cars across the street to block it, and then officers directed victims...err, suspects...err, perps...err, citizens who happened to be driving down that street into an unused parking lot where they were detained and interrogated.
Maybe if it began costing a couple of LEO lives whenever they did this kind of totally un-Constitutional crap it would tend to reduce such violations. I say this having cops in the family.
Slashdot Mirror
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
- Rudyard Kipling
If more people had read and understood Kipling's poem and heeded his warning, the US and the world would not be in such a perilous predicament that threatens the lives and freedom of everyone on the planet.
Alas, alas...
The US Federal Reserve has borrowed all it can against US assets and the gold that other nations have on deposit with the Fed. They have sold all the gold that they still have outstanding loans against, including all the gold that all the various nations entrusted to the Federal Reserve.
The details surrounding the recent partial "repatriation" of German Bundesbank gold (they couldn't even make the first installment payment in full) illustrates this. The US Federal Reserve makes Bernie Madoff look like a 3-card Monty scammer.
As soon as the awareness sinks in with other foreign/international banks and organizations that all the gold they placed in trust with the US has been quietly sold, the US Dollar is done. Cue the US economic collapse and rioting, food shortages, starvation, death, and destruction.
It's now too late to avoid.
Strat
So this Jefferson and Franklin guy, in their wide traveling I assume they visited In and Out, assessed mass transit systems, really thorough reviewed the modern Industrial food distribution system for 6 billion people.
Irrelevant.
These are universal principles of humanity and the government that humanity creates regardless of and independent from the tools, infrastructure, or technology existing at the time or the type of political ideology in control.
The principles they espouse were true in the days of Plato, they were true during the US revolutionary war, and they will be true for as long as people are recognizably human. They are principles built around the basic nature of humans. That has not changed for over 10 thousand years and will likely be little different in another 10 thousand years.
Strat
If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. - Thomas Jefferson
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. - Thomas Jefferson
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. - Benjamin Franklin
We can either have an entitlement society like the one we have in the US now, or we can have freedom.
Strat
John Spartan: [to machine on wall after finding out that they no longer use toilet paper] Thanks a lot you shit-brained, fuck-faced, ball breaking, duck fucking pain in the ass.
Moral Statute Machine: John Spartan, you are fined five credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute.
John Spartan: [grabbing the tickets] So much for the seashells. See you in a few minutes.
Strat
So now...hackers will not only steal my identity, they will steal my vote.
Nah, the votes will belong to the NSA.
If this type of "voting" becomes widely implemented, the pro-NSA politicians won't even have to pay lip-service to their electorates' wishes any longer in order to be elected/re-elected. Campaign ads might start looking more like a "Tarrlytons" billboard from "Idiocracy".
http://youtu.be/OzUcoZdfCOY
Encryption won't help, as the hardware and the algorithms have already been back-doored by the NSA. Never mind the issues with carriers.
The government exceeding the powers it's allowed is proving, yet again and in yet another way, to be why we can't have nice things.
Strat
For me, baby, it's all about the Thrust... oooooh
Nonono, you're thinking of a *fig* Newton!
Strat
In all fairness, there may be some food handling safety issues involved with some of those.
Excuse me? Bigger "issues" than starvation or eating garbage out of a dumpster? If I were starving, I'd risk a bout of diarrhea to save my life.
"Issues" for whom, exactly? None for a starving person. But, I guess it's better that some number of people starve rather than create "issues" for politicians & bureaucrats, eh?
Well, if you're homeless and starving, I suppose you could just kill a politician or bureaucrat and go to jail to get fed. Eventually there will be very few politicians and bureaucrats left to enact and enforce laws and regulations like the ones in question, so it's a self-solving problem done that way.
Strat
I generally do not like the idea of trophy hunting, but in some states excess game can be donated to any meat processor, who will process and package it for donation to those having problems putting food on the table. I believe Texas has such a program, but I don't know if this place is involved in it.
Yes, there *was* a program for hunters to donate their game to feed the hungry. The ever-helpful government stepped in and ended that.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/wild-chef/2013/03/la-health-officials-destroy-1600-pounds-venison-donated-hunters
The homeless shelter providing the venison-including meals does not receive any government assistance or taxpayer money. It is self-sufficient.
There are new laws & regulations being passed/implemented by those in government across the US aimed at halting private citizens, churches, etc from feeding the hungry:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/it-is-illegal-to-feed-the-homeless-in-cities-all-over-the-united-states
http://lovewins.info/2013/08/feeding-homeless-apparently-illegal-in-raleigh-nc/
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/5190505/illegal-to-feed-homeless-in-city-parks
http://youtu.be/uGtWNbSkPfc
There's much more.
With the US middle class disappearing and poverty, homelessness, and hunger skyrocketing, it seems like the government (both (R) and (D)) wants to play "Hunger Games" and use starvation as a tool of control.
I'm certainly reassured that government bureaucrats and politicians being in charge of everyones' health care will be a good thing.
For the bureaucrats and politicians.
Strat
It's not clear that these obviously looked like musical instruments to a person who isn't accustomed to seeing various kinds of flutes. Bundle of reeds with notches in them. Customs probably thought they were bongs.
What is clear is that ICE inspectors didn't give a flute.
They were worried about the bamboo being capable of taking root and growing, but a rooted flute is hard to toot.
Just ask Courtney Love.
Strat
Well, since we had the "Dancing Itos" http://youtu.be/XQPVA2bGsB4
I guess now we'll get the "Goose-Stepping Pauleys".
Strat
Lawyers and judges are clearly overrated. Any opinion is as good as any other.
Everything that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mussolini, and Hitler did to their respective peoples was "legal".
Appeal to authority fails.
The founders placed the ultimate responsibility for determining the constitutionality of laws/acts and other actions/policies of the government in the hands of the people.
The US is in a state of "cold" civil war, with the Federal government on one side, and the people on the other. It hasn't gotten to the point of open warfare...yet. However, given the unconstitutional and authoritarian/fascist path that those in the Federal government seem determined to pursue, a domestic shooting war appears inevitable.
How, you may ask, can one shoot the women and children of government leaders? You just don't lead 'em as much. War is hell.
Strat
Interestingly AP points out that 'Officials say data is not kept to determine if the cameras are driving down crime.'
If they kept such data around, somebody might try to halt the corrupt-politicians/connected-crony-contractor gravy train by publicizing the fact that it does not fulfill it's officially-stated purpose.
Not that halting it would happen just because of massive corruption being exposed. One has only to look at the example set by the Rape-A-Scan corruption debacle. The government basically reacted to being caught with "fuck you".
Been a lot of that from the government lately regardless of which political party is in power. Obviously, they are progressively worried less and less about the reaction of the people as time passes and their power, reach, and control grows. That's not good.
"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When people fear the government, there is tyranny." - Some old colonial dude that never even owned a computer or smartphone.
We're swiftly running out of boxes.
Strat
Its a very sad state in the world that any article - even those who not even talk about global warmning - get dragged into that flame war by the deniers.
So you're saying that the sarcasm-dripping very first post under this article by EvilSS...
The Big Question Is...
How can I use this to continue to deny global warming is caused by man? Cable-news fed minds want to know!
...Was a "denier" post?
Do you have a pair of the peril-sensitive as well as the reality-distorting type?
And most humorous of all, a post that is pure flamebait and just plain wrong is modded "+5 Insightful"?
Priceless.
And people wonder why the aliens haven't made contact.
Strat
I thought we talked about climate?
That is happening inside of the atmosphere, not inside of the earth crust.
Heat energy produced by the flexing of the crust along with that coming from the core propagates by conduction and radiation, including to the seas and the atmosphere, and eventually radiates into space. Think about your point about the crust of the Earth flexing approximately two feet from the moon's tidal gravity pull. That's a lot of heat energy being generated! Where do you think it goes, hmm? Does it just stay there?
Everything is connected together. Everything affects everything else. Earth's climate is just one tiny, tiny part of something like a giant, almost infinitely-complex cosmic Rube Goldberg machine, where each step breaks down sets of interdependent systems into more subsets of interdependent systems, turtles all the way down.
Heat from the Earth is critical to making the climate habitable. Earth would be a snowball if the core was cold. That would also mean no more magnetic field to prevent the surface from being irradiated and the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere in a handful of centuries.
The "moon" Europa on the other hand is heated by the gravity of the "planet" Jupiter. That is a slight difference.
Only in scale and ratio. Europa also does the same to Jupiter, except Jupiter is so massive Europa's tidal forces are tiny. If Earth's moon spun faster than the period of its' orbit, it would experience tidal flexing as well. Heck, there might even be some mostly-dormant moon-volcanoes for Dr. Evil to build new lairs in.
Anyone got enough string to wrap around the moon a couple times so we can all give a good tug? Maybe if we utilized all the dental floss that Austin Powers never used...?
Strat
Sure, as the moon does exactly what to warm or cool the earth?
Let me introduce you to the concept of tidal forces and their effect causing significant heat as as the mass of a planetary body, especially the crust, flexes in response.
Check out Europa and the Jovian tidal forces that generate enough heat energy to keep water liquid that far from the sun, and even cause huge geysers, for an example.
Hm, strange as a matter of coincident I had checked that yesterday. Nearly burned my fingers, damn hot down there. Now as you mention it, I checked the rotation of the core again. I see no difference.
We are actually becoming quite good at being able to analyze and gather data from the passage of shock waves through materials, thanks in large part to military-driven research.
We are just beginning to understand what lies far beneath our feet. In fact, they've relatively recently come up with an almost entirely new structural opposing-spins model for the inner and outer cores.
Here are a couple of articles briefly describing it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110220142817.htm
This part I found interesting:
In particular, as the inner core grows, the heat released during solidification drives convection in the fluid in the outer core.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2423629/Earths-inner-core-spins-eastward-direction-faster-rate-planets-surface.html
Now, where do you suppose all that convection is eventually transferring all that heat energy to? Heck, that's almost an entirely separate climate system in itself which we have extremely little understanding of.
Are you saying that we know and understand enough about this to safely rule it out of climate models?
Look, we simply have not been around to collect enough data or advance our understanding enough about the myriads of systems and even basic structure of the planet to make reliable predictions. The only prediction we can make with certainty is that climate will change on the planet. Anything more is an educated guess, at best.
Humans should be concentrating on becoming a space-faring species that can concentrate most of it's energy collection/generation and resource collection and processing off-planet, along with self-sustaining colonies, possibly either space habitats at Earth/moon La Grange points or on Mars or elsewhere.
The hoarding mentality that would have humans increasingly restricted in their energy and resource consumption is based on assuming that we must continue to only exploit the resources here on Earth and that humans will never live independently off of Earth, nor provide energy or resources to humans on Earth from off-planet.
If you truly want to be "green", push for full-on private and commercial exploitation of space and the establishment of colonies with the goal of eventual self-sufficiency. This will do more to eliminate the negative effects of humans on the Earth in a permanent way than anything else (short of killing ourselves and/or returning to hunter-gatherer level) we could possibly do.
Now, *that's* what I call "forward"!
Strat
There's no point accounting for Milankovitch cycles [wikipedia.org] unless you're simulating climate across at least several thousand years. The cycles are so long that they have negligible impact on simulations of less than a thousand years.
They can't even create models that reliably track with the little climate data we have for the last several thousand years.
Now you expect them to predict to a much more precise degree climate across a mere thousand years or less? That's the equivalent in geological-climate-cycle terms to the argument that short term weather has nothing to do with long term climate.
There are many major contributors to climate change that we simply don't understand sufficiently nor have enough data about to be able to calculate their influences with sufficient accuracy and reliability to make it something that should be cause for inflicting by government force major hardships and condemnation to poverty and suffering for billions, and the stagnation of the progress of human civilization.
Strat
There are LOTS of things "left". In fact there are so many variables, creating so much "noise", than any "signal" from AGW has been extremely difficult to detect (and indeed, might not even exist).
One thing I'm not aware that any of the models have accounted for is "wobble" in the Earth's orbital axis-tilt, nor, come to think of it, slight variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun. The slowly-enlarging orbit of the moon and the accompanying lessening of tidal forces would also have to play some role as well.
There's also the reported slowing of the spin of the Earth's iron core, which produces Earth's magnetic field.
You're also correct that a mere 1,000 years of data is orders of magnitude too tiny a sample to make any sort of predictions with any credible/meaningful percentage of assurance they are correct.
No amount of software modeling wizardry or scientific genius can make up for having insufficient data. "I'm sorry Captain, we have insufficient data at this time."
Strat
The problem is that this therapy tends to erase all memories. It is a very blunt instrument, just slightly better than a lobotomy.
From "Future News":
Scientists examining satellite views of Earth announced yesterday that they have begun noticing a pattern where the lights all across the US suddenly dim right after each new Snowden data release and publicized ACA-related government failure. Some are attempting to tie this with system instabilities surrounding the recently government-mandated-under-ACA-2.0 brain implants.
When later asked for additional details, the scientists were quoted as replying; "What announcement?".
Strat
I believe them.
Just as much as I believe that Nigerian Prince's nephew's super deal for helping him get funds out of the country.
C'mon, RSA guys. I know you're pretty butt-hurt about this revelation from the Snowden release. Heck, I can even understand that you guys may well have received an "offer you can't refuse" from the NSA, et al.
You'd be much better off playing that angle, rather than attempt a laughably-preposterous and totally unbelievable denial. The denial gets you no sympathy or possible assistance out of your situation at all from the public, only hatred, vitriol, and the ends of many of your careers.
Remember that when making deals with the Empire, Darth has a nasty habit of "altering the deal". Though you "pray" he "doesn't alter it further", it never fails to eventually happen. Neville Chamberlain, 'nuff said.
Strat
It seems, lately, that there is a clearer-than-ever delineation between legality and enforceability. If our government commits an illegal act, who is able to enforce it? Who's able to hold them accountable? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that question.
The answer to your question is the same answer that's included in the Constitution, the same answer that's always been the ultimate answer to all out-of-control governments.
You. The citizens.
You and others that would be willing to put your lives on the line when all other options have been shown to be worthless/ineffective, to pick up a sniper rifle, build an IED, make Molotov cocktails, organize and plan, and target the criminal leaders and take them out..
There are still a few peaceful options left to try yet, like the recent push for a convention of States to amend the Constitution to rein in the Federal government.
http://conventionofstates.com/
However, if the government steps in to stop such reforms, there will be no alternatives left.
Strat
They're advocating a 'constitutional convention' to rewrite the Constitution to their liking,...
Yeah, first attack the messengers, then attempt to assign intentions and actions to them that are nowhere but in your mind.
Try actually reading the content and maybe actually do a little independent research instead of parroting talking points.
You can start with the FAQ: http://www.conventionofstates.com/sites/default/files/COS%20FAQs%20handout.pdf
But of course, that might disturb your established biases and world-view.
Congress has abrogated their duties and obligations by creating Federal agencies, departments, etc and transferring the ability to make laws and/or regulations with the power of law, which is prima facia un-Constitutional on it's face. The President thinks that he has the power to decide what laws and what parts he'll enforce and when, effectively bypassing a large portion of Congress' powers and checks completely.
Congress is no longer an effective check on expansion of Federal scope and power. It has become a club for career politicians who only want to increase their power, wealth, and control while using the power of the government and their position in it to make certain they remain in office, often for decades. It no longer represents the people or the best interests of the nation.
The US is on the ragged edge of an economic and social collapse. The government is the source of the problem, therefor cannot, is incapable of, and has no real will to fix the problems it has created. It's now up to the citizens to take action. If you've got a better idea, get up and do something instead of kibitzing on what others who actually take action do.
Talk is cheap.
Strat
Well, not sure which side of "effective" this puts the NSA, but the disinformation campaign to lead people to think they've eliminated all the Zeros seems to be at least somewhat effective.
http://youtu.be/UmUseKNrh6Q
Strat
Just remember, under the Old Regime, man oppressed man. Under the New Regime, they reversed that...
Agreed, in that both mainstream US political parties are nearly identical when it comes to screwing over US citizens. It's only the precise manner of implementation and rates at which individual liberty is lost that are up for debate.
Time for a convention of States. http://conventionofstates.com/
Strat
Didn't America have a civil war over slavery?
Yes, twice.
Once in 2008 and again in 2012.
The slavers won both times.
Strat
I want to know what the hell pretext the people were pulled over for in the first place.
If you're talking about the Texas incident, they simply pulled a couple of squad cars across the street to block it, and then officers directed victims...err, suspects...err, perps...err, citizens who happened to be driving down that street into an unused parking lot where they were detained and interrogated.
Maybe if it began costing a couple of LEO lives whenever they did this kind of totally un-Constitutional crap it would tend to reduce such violations. I say this having cops in the family.
Strat