So, the Earth has been like a gigantic 'battery' for the past several hundred million years or so, being trickle-charged by solar energy.
All of a sudden (in a microscopic blink of an eye, in terms of geologic time) it's being discharged by human willy-nilly technology. Uh-oh... where's that Fast Recharge switch? There isn't one. The Bush/Kerry Demo-Publi-Cratican establishment tried for awhile to get us to think they could just drill a bunch of hydrogen wells or something to solve this little prob, but apparently reality recently intervened on that one. Personally, I think the only answer is figuring out how to safely tap nuclear energy to keep the whole show going, which would be the elegant solution, but oh what a head-scratcher that one seems to be so far.
I guess all we can really hope is that the demand for the ancient power source doesn't get too great in the near future, giving us all time to get used to it (whatever that may mean), and find some way of dealing with what looks more and more like a "Tragedy of The Commons writ very large" taking its course.
Looking back to the 1950's, say, we probably should have said to ourselves, "Gee, if we don't stop using all this stuff now, our grandchildren are going to hate us someday". Right. Oh well...
(btw, if someone over there wants to label this a 'troll' post, well, that's ok with me I guess)
Driving down the Thruway into NYC one finds oneself in absolute RIVERS of cars & trucks, trains going by, planes zooming overhead. And they're gonna run all this on solar and wind power?? Give.. me.. a.. break...
(maybe the vegans ARE right. We should all hurry up and learn to live in grass huts and eat the same).
Yummy.
A great book that should be read by coders etc. looking to do their own design graphics is "About Face - The Essentials of Interface Design" by Alan Cooper. It's informative, and also funny. Example: A person's PC is about to crash, and a box pops up on the screen that says, "System failure. You will lose all your data." Then there's a button below that says, "Okay". (Maybe an amusing little grinning demon icon would make it 'look' better;)
What if everybody in the galaxy with radio tech is listening... and nobody's sending anything? Sort of a cosmic phone system where all the subscribers are sitting around waiting for someone to call their answering machines (we'll reply after we've listened to your message and decided whether we want to know you or not). Not much of a start for a galactic civilization, I guess... but hey, it's a dworp-eat-dworp Universe out there. **************** "Nature never says yes to a theory. It is almost always no. The best one can hope for is a maybe." - Albert E.
It was all laid out in Robert Pirsig's "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance". (you did read it, didn't you?... Oh well, I understand). PC people (and maybe Linux heads, too) just love to get in there and get their hands dirty trying to get an old British sports car or T-Bird or air-cooled VW to keep on running. Mac people own a sleek Beemer, and wouldn't dream of letting anyone other than factory-authorized techies mess with the thing, no matter what the cost/headache. Both comparisons are equally valid and appropriate in the end.
Well, here we have a wonderful probe sent by Earthlings to finally take an actual look at Titan, and it may soon resolve some of its mysterious features.
I can't help thinking of the Kurt Vonnegut character, Salo (from "The Sirens Of Titan"), the million year old robot who was stranded on that world, whose journey through the Universe was to present to any race of beings he met a message he kept on a dogtag around his neck. The message consisted of a single dot, which meant in his language:
"Greetings!"
Here's hoping that they (the folks at JPL and the IAU or International Astronomical Union or whoever) will name a mountain range or at least a small crater or something "Salo". I'm sure some of them must know about this, and here's hoping that they will at least consider it.
(In fact, they could just name a tiny crater "Greetings" and that would be appropriate enough, imho)
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So, the Earth has been like a gigantic 'battery' for the past several hundred million years or so, being trickle-charged by solar energy. All of a sudden (in a microscopic blink of an eye, in terms of geologic time) it's being discharged by human willy-nilly technology. Uh-oh... where's that Fast Recharge switch? There isn't one. The Bush/Kerry Demo-Publi-Cratican establishment tried for awhile to get us to think they could just drill a bunch of hydrogen wells or something to solve this little prob, but apparently reality recently intervened on that one. Personally, I think the only answer is figuring out how to safely tap nuclear energy to keep the whole show going, which would be the elegant solution, but oh what a head-scratcher that one seems to be so far. I guess all we can really hope is that the demand for the ancient power source doesn't get too great in the near future, giving us all time to get used to it (whatever that may mean), and find some way of dealing with what looks more and more like a "Tragedy of The Commons writ very large" taking its course. Looking back to the 1950's, say, we probably should have said to ourselves, "Gee, if we don't stop using all this stuff now, our grandchildren are going to hate us someday". Right. Oh well... (btw, if someone over there wants to label this a 'troll' post, well, that's ok with me I guess)
Driving down the Thruway into NYC one finds oneself in absolute RIVERS of cars & trucks, trains going by, planes zooming overhead. And they're gonna run all this on solar and wind power?? Give.. me.. a.. break... (maybe the vegans ARE right. We should all hurry up and learn to live in grass huts and eat the same). Yummy.
A great book that should be read by coders etc. looking to do their own design graphics is "About Face - The Essentials of Interface Design" by Alan Cooper. It's informative, and also funny. ;)
Example: A person's PC is about to crash, and a box pops up on the screen that says, "System failure. You will lose all your data." Then there's a button below that says, "Okay".
(Maybe an amusing little grinning demon icon would make it 'look' better
What if everybody in the galaxy with radio tech is listening... and nobody's sending anything? Sort of a cosmic phone system where all the subscribers are sitting around waiting for someone to call their answering machines (we'll reply after we've listened to your message and decided whether we want to know you or not). Not much of a start for a galactic civilization, I guess... but hey, it's a dworp-eat-dworp Universe out there.
****************
"Nature never says yes to a theory. It is almost always no. The best one can hope for is a maybe." - Albert E.
It was all laid out in Robert Pirsig's "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance". (you did read it, didn't you?... Oh well, I understand). PC people (and maybe Linux heads, too) just love to get in there and get their hands dirty trying to get an old British sports car or T-Bird or air-cooled VW to keep on running. Mac people own a sleek Beemer, and wouldn't dream of letting anyone other than factory-authorized techies mess with the thing, no matter what the cost/headache. Both comparisons are equally valid and appropriate in the end.
Well, here we have a wonderful probe sent by Earthlings to finally take an actual look at Titan, and it may soon resolve some of its mysterious features. I can't help thinking of the Kurt Vonnegut character, Salo (from "The Sirens Of Titan"), the million year old robot who was stranded on that world, whose journey through the Universe was to present to any race of beings he met a message he kept on a dogtag around his neck. The message consisted of a single dot, which meant in his language: "Greetings!" Here's hoping that they (the folks at JPL and the IAU or International Astronomical Union or whoever) will name a mountain range or at least a small crater or something "Salo". I'm sure some of them must know about this, and here's hoping that they will at least consider it. (In fact, they could just name a tiny crater "Greetings" and that would be appropriate enough, imho)