INVEST NOW!!! Cheap real estate in the restful town of Chernobyl! Don't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to mutate to the good life.
Please see my nukes page and take a look at the Chernobyl sentences in there... and you would see that it probably wouldn't be dangerous to actually do that!
The fears of nuclear power are irrational.
It is not irrational to be careful with nuclear power, but the relative fear of nuclear power vs. other technology is many orders of magnitude beyond rationality.
Ignoring for the moment the practicalities of killing somebody over the Internet(!?), doesn't the USA already have murder/manslaughter laws? Why does there need to be special legislation depending on the method employed? Do you have special laws for murder with a knife; with a gun; with a mango?
Actually, there are lots of laws which alter the impact of normal convictions if a firearm was used in the offense.
However, in general, you point is valid. Internet crimes should be treated like the equivalent non-internet crime (where possible - I don't know of the non-internet crime for spam... littering?).
As to why there are special laws... it has nothing to do with what is best for the society and everything to do with what is best for this or that politician. People are often scared by the potentials of new technologies (notice the highly irrational fears of nuclear power, for example). Politicians take advantage of these fears by getting publicity for holding hearings and making laws to "solve the problem." In addition, special interests often encourage this. For example, in 1986 a law was passed in the US making it illegal to listen to cellular calls on a scanner, and making it illegal to even cell a radio which could receive cell calls. The reason, of course, was that the cell phone industry, which at that time had NO encryption and was using simple FM radio, was afraid that a few intercepted calls would hurt their business. Where were all of you anti-DMCA guys when they were taking away our radio listening freedoms, btw? (I know... mostly in kindergarten)
Several states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, have controversial laws that allow persons to use deadly force to protect property against unwanted intruders
Don't leave out Arizona! We have such laws. It is legal to shoot someone committing first degree burglary (burglary of an occupied residence) and first degree arson (arson of an occupied structure). There isn't anything controversial about it... here. About once every three months I read an article about some septugenarian widow who blows away a punk who came into her house. BTW... it is also legal to carry a concealed weapon on your property or place of business, without a permit.
The reason for these laws is to remove from the homeowner the (very dangerous) requirement to determine if the intruder is a physical danger/ The very act of intrusion into an occupied structure is construed as life threatening.
As a result of these laws, burglary of unoccupied residences is pretty rare. Most Arizonans don't need to fear intruders in their homes (except in some neighborhoods where massive armed invasions occasionally happen - usually with drug transactions involved).
someone circumvents your wall to get inside to do anything (regardless of the activity) it is breaking and entering. If someone does not have a legal means (hold the keys or expressed permission to 'jump the fence') then they have no right being there. Regardless of 'how high' and 'how wide' the wall may or may not be.
Here in Arizona we just shoot them (if they are indoors). Can I shoot crackers in my website? Oh please? Better yet... how about spammers?
I use truck stops all the time during my annual midwest storm chasing vacation. Truck stops frequently have telephones at the restaurant tables that truckers use to call their dispatchers. We use those phones to dial the internet to get weather data. Sometimes we have to remove the phones from the wall to get at the phone line for the modem, however. Acoustic couplers just don't work very well with modern phones.
A lot of truck stops also have internet kiosks. In fact, I have seen more internet kiosks in truck stops than anyplace else I have been. Truckers have a lot of communications needs - both for business and personal reasons.
BTW... if you take a road trip across America, truck stops are often the best place to stop for gas, quick food, and munchies! They normally have large stores with all sorts of goodies (from munchies to radio equipment to truck stuff). Many of them participate in a books on tape club so you can rent a book, play it in your car, and when you are done, drop it off at another truck stop. A favorite one in Amarillo, TX even has a Radio Shack inside of it. And truck stops now cater to non-truckers (hey, I don't drive a truck - not the smartest tornado chase vehicle).
I would LOVE to find WiFi hotspots in truck stops or anywhere else out in the boonies!
There are significant statistical cognitive differences between males and females, as my daughter, a neuroscientists, would be glad to tell you.
But there always exceptions, which is why arguing by anecdote is dangerous. For example, my mother was a math major and was chosen in WW-II to be quick-trained as an engineer (they took the top 100 female mathematicians in the country for this), and then worked as an electrical engineer. After the war and her children were into high school, she took a traditional female role as a teacher - math, of course. My daughter taught herself calculus (and received full credit for it, btw) when she was in junior high school. One of the earliest and most well known programmers and inventor (or early promoter - I don't remember which) was Grace Hopper. I work with a female software engineer who also has a bachelors and masters in electrical engineering, have worked with many women programmers over the years.
But... on average, women and men choose different fields partly because of different *average* inherited aptitudes for them.
The only point of this is that we disagree as to the definition of bioweapons. I didn't lie. I have a different definition.
Bioweapons in all of these discussions have been related to weapons of mass destruction. A bioweapon which eats a runway is not a WMD. WMD's are weapons which kill LOTS of people, as the term is used in modern discourse. We are not building any of those except nukes, and even in that case our target is to build nukes that produce more precise destruction, reducing collateral damage.
In other words, we could take out a north korean underground nuclear plant by dopping a 20 megaton surface burst on it, creating vast amounts of fallout, and a huge blast radius. We would prefer to have the option of dopping a very low yield (.01kT) deep penetrating bomb with features to minize or prevent fallout. That is what we are ressearching.
It also makes sense to research low yield nuclear weapons for missile defense, which is not WMD research at all! But we don't do that because it is politically not practical yet, even though it is the best way to stop inbound WMD missiles.
So lets stop quibbling about the definition the term "biological weapon" and discuss the real issues.
Do you object to developing biological agents to destroy runways? If so, would you object to developing chemical means to do the same? If so, would you object to developing explosive methods to do the same?
In other words, what exactly is the real problem - generic terms aside?
The Soviet Union developed biological weapons that would be valuable in a MAD retaliatory attack, since the point of such an attack is to cause enormous casualties. Attacking the survivors of nuclear war with multiple pathogens is a remarkably evil and unfortunately effective technique, since the survivors are likely to be sick, immune suppressed, malnourish, under stress, and crowded together.
It is the most evil *unenacted* plan that I have ever heard of that was taken to the phase of instant readiness.
As far as things being created... the creation is unfortunately inevitable. Anthrax is a very common pathogen - the main research was find ways to efficiently produce and treat spores for maximal dispersion. Note, BTW, that Anthrax can be useful as a battlefield weapon, as it causes horrible casualties on the enemy (typically one would attack a support area), but it isn't contagious and doesn't burn through the whole world.
If we had developed novel pathogens, and then spread the knowledge around the world, that would have been very bad. Worse, of course, is actually using them. For that, you can hardly go after us. We didn't use them, and in fact were glad to get rid of them. We had no use for terror weapons (except for retaliation) and nukes are better, cheaper and safer for that. The real evil is that the Russians were continuing their biological weapons program, and continued (to this day?) to have vast amounts of biological weapons in ready-to-fire ICBM's!
THe big danger in the future comes in the area of genetic engineering. The creation of a highly contagious, highly lethal agent is very likely possible (and may very well have been done - hopefully just in Russia). The Russians in the late 90's *published* a paper which showed the implantation of an Ebola toxin gene into the genome of variola major (smallpox). In Australia, researchers *accidently* created a virus in mice that was exceedingly deadly - it seemed to thrive on their immune system (as AIDS does) but it killed rapidly. And it was very contagious. They don't even know if it might have spread to man!
This is scary stuff. Bashing the US for actions taken 40 years ago is really silly under these circumstances.
This is not the same thing as just making it available. I don't think the US is somehow a horrible place because we developed this stuff (as did the British, the Russians, the Chinese, and others)? According to Ken Alibek, as recently as 1990 each major city was targetted by the USSR with 5 biological agents in addition to the nukes. As a target of such, it is not unreasonable that we should have had a program to understand it. We terminated our actual weaponizing program around 30 years ago (unlike Russia or Iraq or Korea or many other countries).
We didn't create the technology and we don't have or use it. Our bad?
Oh, so we published our classified weapons work? Please cite the references. It is not normal US practice to declassify stuff on weapons of mass destruction, after all.
So I would say that your extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof!
I have dish network (can't get cable here anyway). For $5/mo they will rent you a PVR/receiver combination. You are supposed to hook it to a phone (even without the PVR you are supposed to do that), but I don't think you really need to. I have certainly never noticed it on my phone line, and someday maybe I'll unplug it.
Anyway, this thing has changed the way I watch TV - especially since I can now finally get local channels on the satellite (at MUCH better quality than over the air).
This unit has two features that together make eliminating commercials a snap! A 30 second instant forward skip button, and a 10 second reverse skip. It also can schedule recording from the Dish Network's schedule (downloaded autmatically from tge satellite) with a trivial interface. You can also tell it to do periodic recordings, although you have to do that by hand.
It doesn't try to psych you out and record programs for 6 year old left handed child molesters, or something!
The one I have (the 901) seems to be pretty a bit unreliable, but since it is rented it is replaced free of charge by depot maintenance (meaning that while you are waiting 24 hours for the new one to arrive, you can still use whatever is still working on the ole one). I suspect the newer models may be better.
As long as Iraq is not invading Israel, Europe, or any of our allies, what do we care? -- Well, there is one reason why we care, and it ain't to save Kuwait. I think we do not want any one of these countries to become too powerful and to control too much of this resourceful area... Not necessarily a bad strategy, but be honest here.. We are not doing this to save Muslims.
No, of course we are doing it in our national interest. It is nice, however, that it will also improve the world.
The reason we care is we don't need another North Korea.
Isreal also breaks UN resolutions just as Iraq does.
I really don't care who breaks UN resolutions, since the UN is one of the most undemocratic institutions in the world! After all, Libya has the same vote as the US as does China as does Luxembourg. To me, the only purpose of UN resolutions is to pacify allies. Other than that, they are pretty useless. I have ZERO respect for the United Nations and the people who work there.
And computers have advanced at a much faster rate than this! This is not a reason to stop - lets keep going and make it even better, shall we?
Sigh. Computers had a lot more progress that was achievable. Cars don't. That is what I mean by reaching the limit of vanishing returns. We can choose to invest enormous amounts of our wealth in lots of ways in the hope of making it better. But one needs balance.
BALANCE!
Kyoto was a mass wealth transfer to the poor countries. It had *NOTHING* to do with improving the environment. In fact, it also exempted China which is rapidly becoming the most polluting country on earth. Kyoto was just one more screw-the-US international treaty not worth the paper it was written on. It was presented as a measure to stave off "global warming" but in fact would have had no significant impact. Rather, it was a measure to transfer wealth to the third world, and to do so in stupid ways. Kyoto would not have helped reduce poverty, other than by allowing third and fourth world countries to employ people in pollution belching factories, making Mexico City look good!
Lets change our relationship with these people altogether. The best way to do that is what we are about to do: denazify the bastards, by force if necessary. The problem with trying to not "be dependent" on them is that it won't work - because even in 10 or 20 years the *world* will still need oil, and since oil is a fungible commodity, the middle east will be where a lot of it comes from. And we will still need oil.
As far as going to war with them, it is too late. Even if there wasn't a drop of oil in the middle east, we would have to stop Iraq and Iran from getting nukes, and deal with North Korea. These countries are simply so hostile to us that our own safety requires a regime change.
North Korea is admitting to a nuclear weapons program, is hinting at blackmailing the US by selling this technology to the highest bidder (aka bin Laden), and has stated that "sactions are an act of war." And yet, George W. considers this a "diplomatic" issue where there is no war on the near horizon. Conversely, we have found no indication of nuclear weapons in Iraq, they *already are* under sanctions, and there is no evidence that they sold technology to terrorists - and yet, W. is raising hell and moving the fleet in, while the U.N. still maintains there is no "smoking gun." Doesn't make too much sense, does it?
Actually, if you look at the details, it makes enormous sense. Iraq does not yet have the capability of immediately killing 10s of millions of people, while Korea can do it in a matter of minutes. In other words, we can pre-empt Iraq. It is too late to pre-empt Korea! I have been to Seoul and *seen* North Korea from that city of 20,000,000 people. The North Koreans have enough artillery, with enough chemical weapons, to kill virtually all of those people at the very start of hostilities. They also have enough capability to potentially kill lots of Japanese with WMD warheads on their IRBM's (Tokyo is within long range scud range of North Korea). Thus we have a very different problem with the North.
Iraq needs to be taken down both because it is a very dangerous country with a history of killing more Muslims (by far) than any other country in history, and history of strategic miscalculations: the Iraq-Iran war, the invasion of Kuwait. Furthermore, given the way power politics work in the middle east, taking down and denazifying Iraq is likely to cause the remaining governments over there to be much more agreeable to our peacemaking and anti-terrorist efforts.
Keep in mind that in the middle east (including Iraq), the main way that repressive and totalitarians governments stay in power is by vilifying Israel and making it the main enemy. This is a classic trick - maintain an external enemy so you can justify your internal repression and economic troubles. Thus even countries such as Egypt run vicious anti-semitic (Protocols of Zion, the Blood Libel) propaganda in their official papers. As long as they are allowed to do this, young Arabs and Persians are going to hate Israel, and by extension, the US.
In fact, our support for Israel gives lie to the idea that our entire middle easter policy was about oil. We could do as Europe is doing and try to feed Israel to the anti-Israeli and anti-semitic wolves in an attempt to appease the oil countries and Islamicist terrorism, but we don't. Israel is a modern western democracy, and deserving of our support.
North Korea, unlike Saddam, has a history of making great big threats and then doing nothing with them. It is possible that the entire current crisis is an attempt by them to get aid from the US to prop up their evil regime. It is more likely that they want us to give them aid, put a "bandaid" over their nuclear program like Clinton/Carter did, and have their cake and eat it too. Hopefully the Chinese will stop them, because if Korea stays nuclear, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will also go nuclear - which is very much against China's geostrategic interests.
But this time, if NK doesn't stop their nuclear program, there should be and I think there will be war. Hopefully we can destroy their nuclear infrastructure without escalation (as Israel did so successfully in Iraq in 1981). More likely there will be a horrible, bloody war in which millions of civilians will be killed by the NK's. In this case, the people who didn't plan ahead are the South Korean's, who should have moved their centers of population south after the first Korean War.
THe problem with using the government to deal with externalities is that government is a big, blunt instrument. After all, how many people on Slashdot are happy with how they have dealt with DRM or the Microsoft issue?
I sure as hell am not happy - but what is the alternative? Do nothing? As a staunch capitalist, what do you think should happen to MS?
I think that the Operating System division of MS, and perhaps the Office Products division should be treated as *natural monopolies* and regulated like a public utility and prevented from using their monopoly profits from investing in other businesses. I don't think that punitive measures are needed except in specific cases - Microsoft got their monopoly fairly (not completely) honestly, and if they hadn't gotten it, someone else (Digital Research? IBM?) would have it, because a monopoly in PC hardware was inevitable.
Do you feel the government should not have a role in the breakup of monopolies? I believe that the capitalist system isn't perfect, and that there is a role of government.
The first role is to protect the civil rights (INCLUDING property rights) of citizens (and by extension, organizations including corporations that are formed by these citizens). This includes protections from criminals (theft, murder, fraud, extortion, etc) and from the government itself (checks and balances).
The second role is to set up laws against true criminal behavior (theft, fraud, etc).
The third is to provide a stable and rational civil legal system so that contracts are honored or the violators can be contested (our system is drifting away from that due to the class action lawyers).
Fourth is to intervene for three reasons: 1) To regulate the existence of a monopoly which is likely to continue due to natural reasons 2) To deal with externalities like environmental issues, but only with extreme caution - not like the current madness 3) National security (such as forcing security rules on airports, chemical companies and nuclear power plants).
Their record on environmental protection is one of total violation of individual property rights... individual property rights (i.e. theft of value from J Random citizen)
You are certainly entitled to have this opinion, but I disagree wholeheartedly. I feel I get much more value out of the (meager) dollars spent on conservation than I do for,
I don't have a problem with spending meager dollars on conservation. And those dollars don't normally involve stealing from individuals...
say, Boston's Big Dig
Isn't that to put in a subway or something? I thought environmentalists worshiped mass transit.
or a military whose budget is sized to account for the possibility of fighting 2.5 wars at a time. The reason you have the freedom to have this conversation is that military (which I served in, BTW, voluntarily). The current budget is very small by historical terms (ratio of GDP), and is *not* large enough to fight even 2 wars at the same time (I think the Bush administration should have immediately started increasing it after 9/11). You get a lot more value from that military than you obviously appreciate. Keep in mind that those soldiers, all volunteers, are paid far less than they would get in civilian jobs, have to live without many basic freedoms (their "constitution" is the Uniform Code of Military Justice - read it some time), and they have to leave their families behind and put their lives on the line, FOR YOU, at any moment.
If I were to strip government down to its most basic functions, they would be: 1) Protection against foreign powers - the military. Without such protection, you soon don't have a country, so all other functions become moot! 2) Protection against criminals: police, criminal courts, jails. 3) A transparent and minimally corrupt system of civil justice, to handle contracts and torts.
That's it!
I do not feel this is radical in the slightest. Why do we need roads in national forests?
Obviously you have never been to the western US, where I live. A single forest is often bigger than the entire state of New Hampshire. Having no roads means having no access except for the younger and healthier citizens who have the time (i.e. wealth) to hike for days into it! I'll tell you what... go ahead and have no roads in the East Coast national forests - fine with me. But let us have our forests in a more reasonable way. Did you know that the Federal Government owns over 75% percent of the land in the state that I live in? We care rather a lot about their policies!
Regarding auto pollution - the issue is diminishing returns - and we have gotten there. Cars are *orders of magnitude* (that's powers of ten) cleaner than they were thirty years ago. Los Angeles smog is much less than when I lived there in the '70s.
As far as Mexico City - yes, I was there ten days helping out after the 1985 earthquake. Once people started going back to work, the smog was *terrible*. But do you know why?
1) Mexico city is in a bowl surrounding by big mountains. This causes thermal inversions to form there that are phenomenal compared to most of the rest of the world. 2) Mexico city has a huge population 3) The people in Mexico are *too poor* to afford low emissions vehicles, much less alternate fuel vehicles. Environmentalists almost universally advocate policies that would damage the poor more than the rich. The best way to help the world overall is to push policies that would help end poverty, because well off countries have the time and money to put into environmental protection, and they also have below-replacement birth rates!
As far as the middle east, there is no doubt that the fact that they have oil and we want it is important. And there is no doubt that if there was no oil there, Saddam would have been less important.
BUT... the radical Islamists hate us anyway. And they are doing a lot of crazy stuff where there is no oil (Afghanistan? Algeria?).
The government of Saudi Arabia is indeed corrupt. But it hardly caters more to the US than the Saudi's. I don't know if you are old enough to remember the oil embargo, but Saudi Arabia was part oof that. Bin Laden was perfectly happy with the US when we were buying Saudi oil but helping the Afghans fight the Russians.
But this is all beside the point anyway. There is simply no practical way to reduce oil dependence in a time frame that has anything to do with Islamic fanaticism. So you are beating a dead horse.
I don't like use being dependent on foreign oil (although we are MUCH less dependent on middle east oil than we used to be). I also don't like use being dependent on the cess pit in the Congo for chromium, etc, etc.
THe problem with using the government to deal with externalities is that government is a big, blunt instrument. After all, how many people on Slashdot are happy with how they have dealt with DRM or the Microsoft issue? Their record on environmental protection is one of total violation of individual property rights (i.e. theft of value from J Random citizen), radical regulations (such as Babbitt's no roads in the national forests program), and overkill (reductions in automobile pollution were needed, but further reductions will make *no* difference in smog, for example).
Sounds like a pretty standard canned anti-enviro-wacko rant... but what the heck, I'll respond with a few little points you might not have thought of an probably won't bother to read. Nice rhetorical trick:-)
There is no doubt that dependence on the mideast has some problems. The question is whether there is anything we can do about it now, and the answer is: no, not in a quantitative sense that yields real qualitative results.
Almost all of our problems extend from oil to some extent, 9/11 being no exception. If acid rain, rising temperatures, melting icecaps, and dying amphibians do not bother you,
Sigh. Acid rain is caused by burning high sulphur coal, not oil! And, in the US, according to a $500,000,000 study by the US gov(that the Clinton administration did it's best to keep out of the public eye), acid rain is the US is a very minor problem, that only requires remediation in a small number of lakes in the NE (and maybe a small part of Canada) which can easily be done by adding a small amount of calcium carbonate!
There are no melting icecaps. The are some receding glaciers, but there are also advancing glaciers (which, of course, never make the news). There is no scientific *evidence* that the glacier melt is caused by man adding CO2 to the atmosphere, although there is some suspicion.
There is absolutely no evidence tying use of oil to dying amphibians. There are a number of causes that have been identified, from the destruction of habitat to epidemics of various amphibian diseases.
perhaps the next (inevitible) attack on our country will.
Let's see... we are supposed to end that attack by not buying oil from the middle east? Right! The attack is enevitable. Oil is in fact somewhat realted to Islamicist terrorism, but if you read their own propaganda (check out a realo Al Queda site in English: Al-Muhajiroun ) and you will see that is is almost all anti-zionism and anti-modernism cloacked in religious fanaticism (see http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000009.html for how environmentalism is headed that way). The real motives behind Islamic terrorism are:
Envy - the middle Eastern Islamic world was once large an powerful. Now it is pitiful (which is not a statement about the religion but about the societies where it exists in the mideast).
Hatred of Israel - the smallest country in the Middle East which is populated by Jews - who are hated by almost all extremist movements
A Fear of Western Mores - those same Islamic cultures (and the religion) have very strong rules about sexual behavior - which form the basis for the social structure - family relationships - and the recent sexual revolution and women's movement tempts them, threatens them and disgusts them. The portrayal of this in the western media, which is more radical than the actual western cultures - at least in the US, makes it even worse.
Religious tracts that encourage and sanctify the use of violence to spread Islam. Many Muslims do not treat these as primary, the same was that many Christians are not Biblical literalists, but the radicals do.
Broken and Corrupt Governments - Bin Laden's biggest complaint started with the corrupt government of Saudi Arabia and his own lack of access to power - even though he is rich.
The influence of the West - they don't like the fact that the west has a lot of influence, especially in the middle east - but of course we do - we are the economically and militarily dominant culture!
... re other points where at least you have a fact or two right... The U.S. consumes a lot more than the rest of the world (per capita) and it also *produces* more than the rest of the world. Of course, little things like having a country with a very low population density spread across thousands of miles, compare to places like France (where I used to live) that is only a few hundred miles in its largest dimension, has a bit to say about *why* we rely more on transportation energy!
"Going Green" too often means forcing people to do things against their will, or constraining their choices. If you are in favor of that, in any significant way, you are anti-capitalist and anti-freedom, regardless of how you style yourself. Further more, doing so often leads to counterproductive results - the Law of Unintended Consequences reigns in government (see Laws of Bureaucracy.
I believe that the government should have a role in environmental protection, because environmental damage is also an externality (not captured in the economic costs to the damager). I also know that the US and the rest of the western world are far more environmentally responsible than almost anywhere else, in spite of what everyone says. We pay enormous amounts of money, in the form of pollution control equipment, research, land set asides, economic uncertainty due to an uncertain regulatory environment, conservations programs, etc. In fact, we pay enough to feed many millions of the world's starving, if we spent the money on that. So we are sacrificing, and we are also sacrificing the poor of the world (often at the cost of their lives), on the altar of environmentalism.
Nobody wants to live in a crappy environment. Nobody wants to sentence their descendants to live in a world of degrading environment. But doing something about it is a lot more than spouting off wrong facts (as you did when you blamed a whole bunch of things on oil), and condemning the west (or especially the US) for being selfish. That is nothing but feel-good babbling - like we often hear from Hollywood elites in their spare time.
Real environmental "progress" requires accounting for little things like the nature of man, the respect of freedom, respect for physical laws, respect for uncertainty, and above all - trying to achieve a balance between the needs of real human beings and environmental remediation.
"No change at all" - your assertion, is beyond silly. Not only is it impossible, but it is extremist and utopian. Grow up!
I certainly don't feel like changing things so they would be less comfortable for me."
I guess you missed that part about millions dying in the third world.
Your whole rant is completly meaningless because your basic assumption, that the chances of us having positive effect are roughly equal to the risks of us having a negative effect, is false.
Actually, that isn't my basic assumption. It is my point #1, which is based on the previous poster's somewhat erroneous assumption that the climate system is too complex for us to understand out impact thereon. OTOH, I would argue that we don't know enough to be able to predict much about the effect, and the chances of a positive result of reducing CO2 by a bit are not that good, and the chances of it having a negative effect are not that bad.
The truth is, we don't want to have _any_ effect. The earth has gone on for at least tens of thousands of years in a fashion that suits our needs just fine. The risk that this is changing dramatically for the worse without our intervention in the next 100 years is not worth taking into account.
You are at least 10000 years too late! We have already had a dramatic effect. We can't exactly put Humpty Dumpy's egg back together! The Indians killed off most of the large mammals in North America when they first arrived. Farming, which is necessary to feed the population that we have now, has drastically altered the landscape of much of the world. Of course, we also have to transport that food if we want people to live, and that requires energy, unless you want to provide your own telekineses powers to do the job?
IOW, the only way to have *no* effect is to turn back the clock 10,000 years. The only way to have no further effect is to kill off all of mankind (which has been suggested by some environmentalists in surprisingly high positions in major groups).
In order to have no practical effect, you have to do things that are prevented by my remaining points in the post, which apparently you didn't read since you stopped with point #1.
Sounds like a pretty standard canned enviro-wacko rant... but what the heck, I'll respond with a few little points you might not have thought of an probably won't bother to read.
The "Warning to Humanity" top scientists had very few climatologists in its ranks, so it is utterly and completely meaningless.
Your problem is that you assume that we *can* change, and that we can do so in a beneficial way.
So let me throw just a couple of problems at you...
1) You say the environment is too complex for us to understand the effects we are having on it. That is true. And that means that any action we take is just as likely to be beneficial or not, considering we don't understand the consequences. So why should we choose the one that will cause massive economic dislocation, ultimately killing the millions of people who have such a marginal life right now that they can't *afford* any diminuation in the economic situation.
2) If you look at what the real scientists say (say, for example the IPCC report - and not the politician written summary, but the real thing), you will realize that the Kyoto recommendations, which are supposed to help with global warming, will, IF THE MODELS ARE RIGHT, make such a tiny change that it will be unmeasurable 100 years into the future.
3) If you look at how much change is reputedly needed to make a difference (again, assuming the models are correct), you would realize that Kyoto is just a Trojan horse... a way to get us used to economic sacrifice so that the REAL changes can be done - cutbacks of 30% or more on CO2 emissions which translate, with TODAYS technology, to massive economic disaster.
4)Those who want to follow some plan of change are arrogant enough to believe that they can determine how mankind will behave for the next 100 years (the normal timeline for most scientists studying the issue). They were also that arrogant in the first decade of the 20th century. They thought they had the problems of government solved. Of course, since then there were a few unanticipated events like like World War I, World War II, the rise of communism (which resulted in the worst environmental damage of any system, along with 100,000,000 murders), the invention of the computer, powered airplanes, nuclear power and bombs, quantum theory, the relativity theories, electronics, Social Security, antibiotics, modern genetics, information theory,.... But I'm sure that you believe that things like this won't happen this century, right? Or that minor things like how people really think and act won't get in the way of our punitive solutions? Pardon me if I don't take seriously those people who think they know enough to effect a solution to some vague issue (gasp, we are hurting poor mother earth), and if I am not willing to make economic sacrifices on behalf of their poorly considered ideas.
5) It is interesting that people who put out radical environmental rants tend to be anti-western. Usually this is because they haven't taken a look at how *other* societies treat the environment - which is on average with considerably less respect than we in the west do. Oh, and every one of the inventions I mentioned above... took place in the evil west.
6) The "vicious cycle of consumerism" is an unintended codeword for people exercising their economic freedoms. It is usually uttered by people who are sure they are smarter than these "consumers" - people who justify their beliefs by thinking that consumers are somehow deluded into making their choices by evil capitalist advertisers.
Finally, let me comment that your rant is a perfect example of what I find so objectionable about modern environmentalism: it encourages illogical people with little grasp of the facts and no grasp of history to act and speak as if they knew something.
Why don't you really learn something and read THIS.
Now... if over the last fifteen years the government had spent that same half a trillion dollars on electric, fuel cell, and hybrid vehicle research, don't you think we'd already have big powerful SUVs that don't depend on oil? We'd have a cleaner country, consumers just as happy, and fewer foreign policy messes. What if we'd been doing that since 1920? Shouldn't we start now so we're not asking the same question again in 2040?
No, actually I don't think we would have that. This is a classical mistake - equating rate of spending money with the rate of resulting technological progress. One could argue, with exactly the same logic that you are using, that if we had invested all that money in medical research, we would all live forever. Or, we could argue that if we invested it all in telekinesis, we could all transport ourselves with no energy at all!
In other words, your argument makes a very dangerous assumption: more money can solve physical problems in a given period of time, regardless of whether they are ever solvable, or if they are solvable without the appearance of another Einstein.
Actually, governments and lots of private industry interests have spent huge amounts of money on alternative transportation energy systems. The reason is the potential enormous profits.
For exmaple, if a company could come up with a viable battery technology for electric cars, the other advantages of electric cars (very low cost and very low maintenance, outside of the battery; very good performance; mechanical simplicity) would cause them to fly out of the show-rooms! Everyone would wnat one, and everyone would buy one, and the car makers would immediatebly build a zillion of them.
With those sorts of profits at stake, the issue isn't the lack of investment, it's the difficulty of the technology!
Keep in mind that there are vast supplies of coal and oil shale. These can be converted into petroleum products for energy use. Arizona's Black Mesa has enough coal to fuel the US for 400 years.
These sources may keep hydrocarbons around for a long time.
Another trend is the end of the population explosion. Many contries in the world are now at negative population growth rates, and that trend is increasing rapidly.
Currently, it's cheaper to get gas - it costs Kuwait only $2/barrel for oil (the difference between that and the world price is all profit). Oil, as has been pointed out, is just too darn good, from an economic standpoint.
The biggest problem with alternative energy (including nuclear, which we *should* use a lot more of) is storage - especially for automotive uses. I simply do not foresee an adequate battery technology coming down the line. Fuel cells may eventually reach the cost, density and safety needs, and we could produce fuel using nuclear generated electricity.
All of this assumes enormous investments and drastic changes in very expensive infrastructure, so it is not going to happen any time soon.
Personally, I am for continuing the large levels of research into these techologies, but not for rationing (by price or any other way) oil for automotive use. The global warming arguments, even if valid, leave decades in which to start changing, and it would be foolish to destroy our economies (with the unpredictable political consequences - such as the rise of anti-environmental or even fascist governments).
I agree with those who want to put controls on telemarketing.
Until then, I use a TeleZapper (disclaimer - I have no monetary interest in this thing. I vaguely remember buying it a Radio Shack). It puts out a beep tone that sounds like a FAX answering.
At first there were a lot of hangups, as the computer dialers give up(and most telemarketers use computer dialers, even if the pitch is given by a human).
Over time, the number of calls has dropped significantly.
Unfortunately, it also blocks the computer calls from the public library which used to tell me when requested books had arrive. So its like Spam - any measure you take to deal with the a$$holes has side effects..
It's really very simple. Intuit has a huge market share in financial software. They are the Microsoft of personal and small business financial software (which is why Microsoft tried to buy them). If you run a small business, you raccountant will probably use QuickBooks or want you to. If you do electronic banking, there are usually only two choices of software: Intuit and Microsoft.
I would have dropped Intuit about a year ago when some of their behavior became disgusting, except they have me by the banking-relationship nads, for both Quicken and Quickbooks (unless I want to -ugh- go to Microsoft). It is still (barely) easier to go along with them than to fight.
Intuit has been acting nastier and nastier and sneakier and sneakier. They are trying their best to adopt a service business model - sucker you into all sorts of subscriptions and services - but in the process they are screwing up the lives of those of us who use their plain old software. When you ask Quickbooks to do a backup, the default (which it uses every time unless you override it) is to backup to their internet service. Ech! I have a much better internet service (connected.com - I have no relationship to them other than as a satisfied customer), and I don't WANT Quickbooks to do this. But just like Microsoft, they make the default something that ties you to yet another one of their products.
I am afraid that now that I have heard this latest, I will have to print out all my tax forms into PDF files to save, rather than just keeping the TurboTax files and programs like I have in the past.
And, of course, *next year* (too late for this year) I am seriously going to look into some competitor who is less arrogante and more friendly.
Slashdot Mirror
INVEST NOW!!! Cheap real estate in the restful town of Chernobyl! Don't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to mutate to the good life.
Please see my nukes page
and take a look at the Chernobyl sentences in there... and you would see that it probably wouldn't be dangerous to actually do that!
The fears of nuclear power are irrational.
It is not irrational to be careful with nuclear power, but the relative fear of nuclear power vs. other technology is many orders of magnitude beyond rationality.
the hard part is when the punk is in Guana and the website that was vandalized is in Alaska.. how do you prosecute the little turd
Smart bombs?
Cruise missiles?
Ignoring for the moment the practicalities of killing somebody over the Internet(!?), doesn't the USA already have murder/manslaughter laws? Why does there need to be special legislation depending on the method employed? Do you have special laws for murder with a knife; with a gun; with a mango?
Actually, there are lots of laws which alter the impact of normal convictions if a firearm was used in the offense.
However, in general, you point is valid. Internet crimes should be treated like the equivalent non-internet crime (where possible - I don't know of the non-internet crime for spam... littering?).
As to why there are special laws... it has nothing to do with what is best for the society and everything to do with what is best for this or that politician. People are often scared by the potentials of new technologies (notice the highly irrational fears of nuclear power, for example). Politicians take advantage of these fears by getting publicity for holding hearings and making laws to "solve the problem." In addition, special interests often encourage this. For example, in 1986 a law was passed in the US making it illegal to listen to cellular calls on a scanner, and making it illegal to even cell a radio which could receive cell calls. The reason, of course, was that the cell phone industry, which at that time had NO encryption and was using simple FM radio, was afraid that a few intercepted calls would hurt their business. Where were all of you anti-DMCA guys when they were taking away our radio listening freedoms, btw? (I know... mostly in kindergarten)
Several states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, have controversial laws that allow persons to use deadly force to protect property against unwanted intruders
Don't leave out Arizona! We have such laws. It is legal to shoot someone committing first degree burglary (burglary of an occupied residence) and first degree arson (arson of an occupied structure). There isn't anything controversial about it... here. About once every three months I read an article about some septugenarian widow who blows away a punk who came into her house.
BTW... it is also legal to carry a concealed weapon on your property or place of business, without a permit.
The reason for these laws is to remove from the homeowner the (very dangerous) requirement to determine if the intruder is a physical danger/ The very act of intrusion into an occupied structure is construed as life threatening.
As a result of these laws, burglary of unoccupied residences is pretty rare. Most Arizonans don't need to fear intruders in their homes (except in some neighborhoods where massive armed invasions occasionally happen - usually with drug transactions involved).
someone circumvents your wall to get inside to do anything (regardless of the activity) it is breaking and entering. If someone does not have a legal means (hold the keys or expressed permission to 'jump the fence') then they have no right being there. Regardless of 'how high' and 'how wide' the wall may or may not be.
Here in Arizona we just shoot them (if they are indoors). Can I shoot crackers in my website? Oh please? Better yet... how about spammers?
I use truck stops all the time during my annual midwest storm chasing vacation. Truck stops frequently have telephones at the restaurant tables that truckers use to call their dispatchers. We use those phones to dial the internet to get weather data. Sometimes we have to remove the phones from the wall to get at the phone line for the modem, however. Acoustic couplers just don't work very well with modern phones.
A lot of truck stops also have internet kiosks. In fact, I have seen more internet kiosks in truck stops than anyplace else I have been. Truckers have a lot of communications needs - both for business and personal reasons.
BTW... if you take a road trip across America, truck stops are often the best place to stop for gas, quick food, and munchies! They normally have large stores with all sorts of goodies (from munchies to radio equipment to truck stuff). Many of them participate in a books on tape club so you can rent a book, play it in your car, and when you are done, drop it off at another truck stop. A favorite one in Amarillo, TX even has a Radio Shack inside of it. And truck stops now cater to non-truckers (hey, I don't drive a truck - not the smartest tornado chase vehicle).
I would LOVE to find WiFi hotspots in truck stops or anywhere else out in the boonies!
There are significant statistical cognitive differences between males and females, as my daughter, a neuroscientists, would be glad to tell you.
But there always exceptions, which is why arguing by anecdote is dangerous. For example, my mother was a math major and was chosen in WW-II to be quick-trained as an engineer (they took the top 100 female mathematicians in the country for this), and then worked as an electrical engineer. After the war and her children were into high school, she took a traditional female role as a teacher - math, of course. My daughter taught herself calculus (and received full credit for it, btw) when she was in junior high school. One of the earliest and most well known programmers and inventor (or early promoter - I don't remember which) was Grace Hopper. I work with a female software engineer who also has a bachelors and masters in electrical engineering, have worked with many women programmers over the years.
But... on average, women and men choose different fields partly because of different *average* inherited aptitudes for them.
The only point of this is that we disagree as to the definition of bioweapons. I didn't lie. I have a different definition.
Bioweapons in all of these discussions have been related to weapons of mass destruction. A bioweapon which eats a runway is not a WMD. WMD's are weapons which kill LOTS of people, as the term is used in modern discourse. We are not building any of those except nukes, and even in that case our target is to build nukes that produce more precise destruction, reducing collateral damage.
In other words, we could take out a north korean underground nuclear plant by dopping a 20 megaton surface burst on it, creating vast amounts of fallout, and a huge blast radius. We would prefer to have the option of dopping a very low yield (.01kT) deep penetrating bomb with features to minize or prevent fallout. That is what we are ressearching.
It also makes sense to research low yield nuclear weapons for missile defense, which is not WMD research at all! But we don't do that because it is politically not practical yet, even though it is the best way to stop inbound WMD missiles.
So lets stop quibbling about the definition the term "biological weapon" and discuss the real issues.
Do you object to developing biological agents to destroy runways? If so, would you object to developing chemical means to do the same? If so, would you object to developing explosive methods to do the same?
In other words, what exactly is the real problem - generic terms aside?
#1) These are not bio or chemical weapons. I did not include nuclear weapons, as I think the US SHOULD be advancing our nuclear weapons research.
#2)Biological weapons are things which kill or injure people, animals or crops. Not concrete or asphalt.
The Soviet Union developed biological weapons that would be valuable in a MAD retaliatory attack, since the point of such an attack is to cause enormous casualties. Attacking the survivors of nuclear war with multiple pathogens is a remarkably evil and unfortunately effective technique, since the survivors are likely to be sick, immune suppressed, malnourish, under stress, and crowded together.
It is the most evil *unenacted* plan that I have ever heard of that was taken to the phase of instant readiness.
As far as things being created... the creation is unfortunately inevitable. Anthrax is a very common pathogen - the main research was find ways to efficiently produce and treat spores for maximal dispersion. Note, BTW, that Anthrax can be useful as a battlefield weapon, as it causes horrible casualties on the enemy (typically one would attack a support area), but it isn't contagious and doesn't burn through the whole world.
If we had developed novel pathogens, and then spread the knowledge around the world, that would have been very bad. Worse, of course, is actually using them. For that, you can hardly go after us. We didn't use them, and in fact were glad to get rid of them. We had no use for terror weapons (except for retaliation) and nukes are better, cheaper and safer for that. The real evil is that the Russians were continuing their biological weapons program, and continued (to this day?) to have vast amounts of biological weapons in ready-to-fire ICBM's!
THe big danger in the future comes in the area of genetic engineering. The creation of a highly contagious, highly lethal agent is very likely possible (and may very well have been done - hopefully just in Russia). The Russians in the late 90's *published* a paper which showed the implantation of an Ebola toxin gene into the genome of variola major (smallpox). In Australia, researchers *accidently* created a virus in mice that was exceedingly deadly - it seemed to thrive on their immune system (as AIDS does) but it killed rapidly. And it was very contagious. They don't even know if it might have spread to man!
This is scary stuff. Bashing the US for actions taken 40 years ago is really silly under these circumstances.
This is not the same thing as just making it available. I don't think the US is somehow a horrible place because we developed this stuff (as did the British, the Russians, the Chinese, and others)? According to Ken Alibek, as recently as 1990 each major city was targetted by the USSR with 5 biological agents in addition to the nukes. As a target of such, it is not unreasonable that we should have had a program to understand it. We terminated our actual weaponizing program around 30 years ago (unlike Russia or Iraq or Korea or many other countries).
We didn't create the technology and we don't have or use it. Our bad?
Oh, so we published our classified weapons work? Please cite the references. It is not normal US practice to declassify stuff on weapons of mass destruction, after all.
So I would say that your extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof!
I have dish network (can't get cable here anyway). For $5/mo they will rent you a PVR/receiver combination. You are supposed to hook it to a phone (even without the PVR you are supposed to do that), but I don't think you really need to. I have certainly never noticed it on my phone line, and someday maybe I'll unplug it.
Anyway, this thing has changed the way I watch TV - especially since I can now finally get local channels on the satellite (at MUCH better quality than over the air).
This unit has two features that together make eliminating commercials a snap! A 30 second instant forward skip button, and a 10 second reverse skip. It also can schedule recording from the Dish Network's schedule (downloaded autmatically from tge satellite) with a trivial interface. You can also tell it to do periodic recordings, although you have to do that by hand.
It doesn't try to psych you out and record programs for 6 year old left handed child molesters, or something!
The one I have (the 901) seems to be pretty a bit unreliable, but since it is rented it is replaced free of charge by depot maintenance (meaning that while you are waiting 24 hours for the new one to arrive, you can still use whatever is still working on the ole one). I suspect the newer models may be better.
As long as Iraq is not invading Israel, Europe, or any of our allies, what do we care? -- Well, there is one reason why we care, and it ain't to save Kuwait. I think we do not want any one of these countries to become too powerful and to control too much of this resourceful area... Not necessarily a bad strategy, but be honest here.. We are not doing this to save Muslims.
No, of course we are doing it in our national interest. It is nice, however, that it will also improve the world.
The reason we care is we don't need another North Korea.
Isreal also breaks UN resolutions just as Iraq does.
I really don't care who breaks UN resolutions, since the UN is one of the most undemocratic institutions in the world! After all, Libya has the same vote as the US as does China as does Luxembourg. To me, the only purpose of UN resolutions is to pacify allies. Other than that, they are pretty useless. I have ZERO respect for the United Nations and the people who work there.
And computers have advanced at a much faster rate than this! This is not a reason to stop - lets keep going and make it even better, shall we?
Sigh. Computers had a lot more progress that was achievable. Cars don't. That is what I mean by reaching the limit of vanishing returns. We can choose to invest enormous amounts of our wealth in lots of ways in the hope of making it better. But one needs balance.
BALANCE!
Kyoto was a mass wealth transfer to the poor countries. It had *NOTHING* to do with improving the environment. In fact, it also exempted China which is rapidly becoming the most polluting country on earth. Kyoto was just one more screw-the-US international treaty not worth the paper it was written on. It was presented as a measure to stave off "global warming" but in fact would have had no significant impact. Rather, it was a measure to transfer wealth to the third world, and to do so in stupid ways. Kyoto would not have helped reduce poverty, other than by allowing third and fourth world countries to employ people in pollution belching factories, making Mexico City look good!
Kilaminjaro has glaciers, not an ice cap.
Lets change our relationship with these people altogether.
The best way to do that is what we are about to do: denazify the bastards, by force if necessary. The problem with trying to not "be dependent" on them is that it won't work - because even in 10 or 20 years the *world* will still need oil, and since oil is a fungible commodity, the middle east will be where a lot of it comes from. And we will still need oil.
As far as going to war with them, it is too late. Even if there wasn't a drop of oil in the middle east, we would have to stop Iraq and Iran from getting nukes, and deal with North Korea. These countries are simply so hostile to us that our own safety requires a regime change.
North Korea is admitting to a nuclear weapons program, is hinting at blackmailing the US by selling this technology to the highest bidder (aka bin Laden), and has stated that "sactions are an act of war." And yet, George W. considers this a "diplomatic" issue where there is no war on the near horizon. Conversely, we have found no indication of nuclear weapons in Iraq, they *already are* under sanctions, and there is no evidence that they sold technology to terrorists - and yet, W. is raising hell and moving the fleet in, while the U.N. still maintains there is no "smoking gun." Doesn't make too much sense, does it?
Actually, if you look at the details, it makes enormous sense. Iraq does not yet have the capability of immediately killing 10s of millions of people, while Korea can do it in a matter of minutes. In other words, we can pre-empt Iraq. It is too late to pre-empt Korea! I have been to Seoul and *seen* North Korea from that city of 20,000,000 people. The North Koreans have enough artillery, with enough chemical weapons, to kill virtually all of those people at the very start of hostilities. They also have enough capability to potentially kill lots of Japanese with WMD warheads on their IRBM's (Tokyo is within long range scud range of North Korea). Thus we have a very different problem with the North.
Iraq needs to be taken down both because it is a very dangerous country with a history of killing more Muslims (by far) than any other country in history, and history of strategic miscalculations: the Iraq-Iran war, the invasion of Kuwait. Furthermore, given the way power politics work in the middle east, taking down and denazifying Iraq is likely to cause the remaining governments over there to be much more agreeable to our peacemaking and anti-terrorist efforts.
Keep in mind that in the middle east (including Iraq), the main way that repressive and totalitarians governments stay in power is by vilifying Israel and making it the main enemy. This is a classic trick - maintain an external enemy so you can justify your internal repression and economic troubles. Thus even countries such as Egypt run vicious anti-semitic (Protocols of Zion, the Blood Libel) propaganda in their official papers. As long as they are allowed to do this, young Arabs and Persians are going to hate Israel, and by extension, the US.
In fact, our support for Israel gives lie to the idea that our entire middle easter policy was about oil. We could do as Europe is doing and try to feed Israel to the anti-Israeli and anti-semitic wolves in an attempt to appease the oil countries and Islamicist terrorism, but we don't. Israel is a modern western democracy, and deserving of our support.
North Korea, unlike Saddam, has a history of making great big threats and then doing nothing with them. It is possible that the entire current crisis is an attempt by them to get aid from the US to prop up their evil regime. It is more likely that they want us to give them aid, put a "bandaid" over their nuclear program like Clinton/Carter did, and have their cake and eat it too. Hopefully the Chinese will stop them, because if Korea stays nuclear, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will also go nuclear - which is very much against China's geostrategic interests.
But this time, if NK doesn't stop their nuclear program, there should be and I think there will be war. Hopefully we can destroy their nuclear infrastructure without escalation (as Israel did so successfully in Iraq in 1981). More likely there will be a horrible, bloody war in which millions of civilians will be killed by the NK's. In this case, the people who didn't plan ahead are the South Korean's, who should have moved their centers of population south after the first Korean War.
THe problem with using the government to deal with externalities is that government is a big, blunt instrument. After all, how many people on Slashdot are happy with how they have dealt with DRM or the Microsoft issue?
I sure as hell am not happy - but what is the alternative? Do nothing? As a staunch capitalist, what do you think should happen to MS?
I think that the Operating System division of MS, and perhaps the Office Products division should be treated as *natural monopolies* and regulated like a public utility and prevented from using their monopoly profits from investing in other businesses. I don't think that punitive measures are needed except in specific cases - Microsoft got their monopoly fairly (not completely) honestly, and if they hadn't gotten it, someone else (Digital Research? IBM?) would have it, because a monopoly in PC hardware was inevitable.
Do you feel the government should not have a role in the breakup of monopolies?
I believe that the capitalist system isn't perfect, and that there is a role of government.
The first role is to protect the civil rights (INCLUDING property rights) of citizens (and by extension, organizations including corporations that are formed by these citizens). This includes protections from criminals (theft, murder, fraud, extortion, etc) and from the government itself (checks and balances).
The second role is to set up laws against true criminal behavior (theft, fraud, etc).
The third is to provide a stable and rational civil legal system so that contracts are honored or the violators can be contested (our system is drifting away from that due to the class action lawyers).
Fourth is to intervene for three reasons:
1) To regulate the existence of a monopoly which is likely to continue due to natural reasons
2) To deal with externalities like environmental issues, but only with extreme caution - not like the current madness
3) National security (such as forcing security rules on airports, chemical companies and nuclear power plants).
Their record on environmental protection is one of total violation of individual property rights... individual property rights (i.e. theft of value from J Random citizen)
You are certainly entitled to have this opinion, but I disagree wholeheartedly. I feel I get much more value out of the (meager) dollars spent on conservation than I do for,
I don't have a problem with spending meager dollars on conservation. And those dollars don't normally involve stealing from individuals...
say, Boston's Big Dig
Isn't that to put in a subway or something? I thought environmentalists worshiped mass transit.
or a military whose budget is sized to account for the possibility of fighting 2.5 wars at a time.
The reason you have the freedom to have this conversation is that military (which I served in, BTW, voluntarily). The current budget is very small by historical terms (ratio of GDP), and is *not* large enough to fight even 2 wars at the same time (I think the Bush administration should have immediately started increasing it after 9/11). You get a lot more value from that military than you obviously appreciate. Keep in mind that those soldiers, all volunteers, are paid far less than they would get in civilian jobs, have to live without many basic freedoms (their "constitution" is the Uniform Code of Military Justice - read it some time), and they have to leave their families behind and put their lives on the line, FOR YOU, at any moment.
If I were to strip government down to its most basic functions, they would be:
1) Protection against foreign powers - the military. Without such protection, you soon don't have a country, so all other functions become moot!
2) Protection against criminals: police, criminal courts, jails.
3) A transparent and minimally corrupt system of civil justice, to handle contracts and torts.
That's it!
I do not feel this is radical in the slightest. Why do we need roads in national forests?
Obviously you have never been to the western US, where I live. A single forest is often bigger than the entire state of New Hampshire. Having no roads means having no access except for the younger and healthier citizens who have the time (i.e. wealth) to hike for days into it! I'll tell you what... go ahead and have no roads in the East Coast national forests - fine with me. But let us have our forests in a more reasonable way. Did you know that the Federal Government owns over 75% percent of the land in the state that I live in? We care rather a lot about their policies!
Regarding auto pollution - the issue is diminishing returns - and we have gotten there. Cars are *orders of magnitude* (that's powers of ten) cleaner than they were thirty years ago. Los Angeles smog is much less than when I lived there in the '70s.
As far as Mexico City - yes, I was there ten days helping out after the 1985 earthquake. Once people started going back to work, the smog was *terrible*. But do you know why?
1) Mexico city is in a bowl surrounding by big mountains. This causes thermal inversions to form there that are phenomenal compared to most of the rest of the world.
2) Mexico city has a huge population
3) The people in Mexico are *too poor* to afford low emissions vehicles, much less alternate fuel vehicles. Environmentalists almost universally advocate policies that would damage the poor more than the rich. The best way to help the world overall is to push policies that would help end poverty, because well off countries have the time and money to put into environmental protection, and they also have below-replacement birth rates!
Kilaminjaro has glaciers, not an ice cap.
As far as the middle east, there is no doubt that the fact that they have oil and we want it is important. And there is no doubt that if there was no oil there, Saddam would have been less important.
BUT... the radical Islamists hate us anyway. And they are doing a lot of crazy stuff where there is no oil (Afghanistan? Algeria?).
The government of Saudi Arabia is indeed corrupt. But it hardly caters more to the US than the Saudi's. I don't know if you are old enough to remember the oil embargo, but Saudi Arabia was part oof that. Bin Laden was perfectly happy with the US when we were buying Saudi oil but helping the Afghans fight the Russians.
But this is all beside the point anyway. There is simply no practical way to reduce oil dependence in a time frame that has anything to do with Islamic fanaticism. So you are beating a dead horse.
I don't like use being dependent on foreign oil (although we are MUCH less dependent on middle east oil than we used to be). I also don't like use being dependent on the cess pit in the Congo for chromium, etc, etc.
THe problem with using the government to deal with externalities is that government is a big, blunt instrument. After all, how many people on Slashdot are happy with how they have dealt with DRM or the Microsoft issue? Their record on environmental protection is one of total violation of individual property rights (i.e. theft of value from J Random citizen), radical regulations (such as Babbitt's no roads in the national forests program), and overkill (reductions in automobile pollution were needed, but further reductions will make *no* difference in smog, for example).
Nice rhetorical trick
There is no doubt that dependence on the mideast has some problems. The question is whether there is anything we can do about it now, and the answer is: no, not in a quantitative sense that yields real qualitative results.
Almost all of our problems extend from oil to some extent, 9/11 being no exception. If acid rain, rising temperatures, melting icecaps, and dying amphibians do not bother you,
Sigh. Acid rain is caused by burning high sulphur coal, not oil! And, in the US, according to a $500,000,000 study by the US gov(that the Clinton administration did it's best to keep out of the public eye), acid rain is the US is a very minor problem, that only requires remediation in a small number of lakes in the NE (and maybe a small part of Canada) which can easily be done by adding a small amount of calcium carbonate!
There are no melting icecaps. The are some receding glaciers, but there are also advancing glaciers (which, of course, never make the news). There is no scientific *evidence* that the glacier melt is caused by man adding CO2 to the atmosphere, although there is some suspicion.
There is absolutely no evidence tying use of oil to dying amphibians. There are a number of causes that have been identified, from the destruction of habitat to epidemics of various amphibian diseases.
perhaps the next (inevitible) attack on our country will.
Let's see... we are supposed to end that attack by not buying oil from the middle east? Right! The attack is enevitable. Oil is in fact somewhat realted to Islamicist terrorism, but if you read their own propaganda (check out a realo Al Queda site in English: Al-Muhajiroun ) and you will see that is is almost all anti-zionism and anti-modernism cloacked in religious fanaticism (see http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000009.html for how environmentalism is headed that way). The real motives behind Islamic terrorism are:
The U.S. consumes a lot more than the rest of the world (per capita) and it also *produces* more than the rest of the world. Of course, little things like having a country with a very low population density spread across thousands of miles, compare to places like France (where I used to live) that is only a few hundred miles in its largest dimension, has a bit to say about *why* we rely more on transportation energy!
"Going Green" too often means forcing people to do things against their will, or constraining their choices. If you are in favor of that, in any significant way, you are anti-capitalist and anti-freedom, regardless of how you style yourself. Further more, doing so often leads to counterproductive results - the Law of Unintended Consequences reigns in government (see Laws of Bureaucracy.
I believe that the government should have a role in environmental protection, because environmental damage is also an externality (not captured in the economic costs to the damager). I also know that the US and the rest of the western world are far more environmentally responsible than almost anywhere else, in spite of what everyone says. We pay enormous amounts of money, in the form of pollution control equipment, research, land set asides, economic uncertainty due to an uncertain regulatory environment, conservations programs, etc. In fact, we pay enough to feed many millions of the world's starving, if we spent the money on that. So we are sacrificing, and we are also sacrificing the poor of the world (often at the cost of their lives), on the altar of environmentalism.
Nobody wants to live in a crappy environment. Nobody wants to sentence their descendants to live in a world of degrading environment. But doing something about it is a lot more than spouting off wrong facts (as you did when you blamed a whole bunch of things on oil), and condemning the west (or especially the US) for being selfish. That is nothing but feel-good babbling - like we often hear from Hollywood elites in their spare time.
Real environmental "progress" requires accounting for little things like the nature of man, the respect of freedom, respect for physical laws, respect for uncertainty, and above all - trying to achieve a balance between the needs of real human beings and environmental remediation.
"No change at all" - your assertion, is beyond silly. Not only is it impossible, but it is extremist and utopian. Grow up!
I certainly don't feel like changing things so they would be less comfortable for me."
I guess you missed that part about millions dying in the third world.
Your whole rant is completly meaningless because your basic assumption, that the chances of us having positive effect are roughly equal to the risks of us having a negative effect, is false.
Actually, that isn't my basic assumption. It is my point #1, which is based on the previous poster's somewhat erroneous assumption that the climate system is too complex for us to understand out impact thereon. OTOH, I would argue that we don't know enough to be able to predict much about the effect, and the chances of a positive result of reducing CO2 by a bit are not that good, and the chances of it having a negative effect are not that bad.
The truth is, we don't want to have _any_ effect. The earth has gone on for at least tens of thousands of years in a fashion that suits our needs just fine. The risk that this is changing dramatically for the worse without our intervention in the next 100 years is not worth taking into account.
You are at least 10000 years too late! We have already had a dramatic effect. We can't exactly put Humpty Dumpy's egg back together! The Indians killed off most of the large mammals in North America when they first arrived. Farming, which is necessary to feed the population that we have now, has drastically altered the landscape of much of the world. Of course, we also have to transport that food if we want people to live, and that requires energy, unless you want to provide your own telekineses powers to do the job?
IOW, the only way to have *no* effect is to turn back the clock 10,000 years. The only way to have no further effect is to kill off all of mankind (which has been suggested by some environmentalists in surprisingly high positions in major groups).
In order to have no practical effect, you have to do things that are prevented by my remaining points in the post, which apparently you didn't read since you stopped with point #1.
Sounds like a pretty standard canned enviro-wacko rant... but what the heck, I'll respond with a few little points you might not have thought of an probably won't bother to read.
The "Warning to Humanity" top scientists had very few climatologists in its ranks, so it is utterly and completely meaningless.
Your problem is that you assume that we *can* change, and that we can do so in a beneficial way.
So let me throw just a couple of problems at you...
1) You say the environment is too complex for us to understand the effects we are having on it. That is true. And that means that any action we take is just as likely to be beneficial or not, considering we don't understand the consequences. So why should we choose the one that will cause massive economic dislocation, ultimately killing the millions of people who have such a marginal life right now that they can't *afford* any diminuation in the economic situation.
2) If you look at what the real scientists say (say, for example the IPCC report - and not the politician written summary, but the real thing), you will realize that the Kyoto recommendations, which are supposed to help with global warming, will, IF THE MODELS ARE RIGHT, make such a tiny change that it will be unmeasurable 100 years into the future.
3) If you look at how much change is reputedly needed to make a difference (again, assuming the models are correct), you would realize that Kyoto is just a Trojan horse... a way to get us used to economic sacrifice so that the REAL changes can be done - cutbacks of 30% or more on CO2 emissions which translate, with TODAYS technology, to massive economic disaster.
4)Those who want to follow some plan of change are arrogant enough to believe that they can determine how mankind will behave for the next 100 years (the normal timeline for most scientists studying the issue). They were also that arrogant in the first decade of the 20th century. They thought they had the problems of government solved. Of course, since then there were a few unanticipated events like like World War I, World War II, the rise of communism (which resulted in the worst environmental damage of any system, along with 100,000,000 murders), the invention of the computer, powered airplanes, nuclear power and bombs, quantum theory, the relativity theories, electronics, Social Security, antibiotics, modern genetics, information theory,.... But I'm sure that you believe that things like this won't happen this century, right? Or that minor things like how people really think and act won't get in the way of our punitive solutions? Pardon me if I don't take seriously those people who think they know enough to effect a solution to some vague issue (gasp, we are hurting poor mother earth), and if I am not willing to make economic sacrifices on behalf of their poorly considered ideas.
5) It is interesting that people who put out radical environmental rants tend to be anti-western. Usually this is because they haven't taken a look at how *other* societies treat the environment - which is on average with considerably less respect than we in the west do. Oh, and every one of the inventions I mentioned above... took place in the evil west.
6) The "vicious cycle of consumerism" is an unintended codeword for people exercising their economic freedoms. It is usually uttered by people who are sure they are smarter than these "consumers" - people who justify their beliefs by thinking that consumers are somehow deluded into making their choices by evil capitalist advertisers.
Finally, let me comment that your rant is a perfect example of what I find so objectionable about modern environmentalism: it encourages illogical people with little grasp of the facts and no grasp of history to act and speak as if they knew something.
Why don't you really learn something and read
THIS.
Now... if over the last fifteen years the government had spent that same half a trillion dollars on electric, fuel cell, and hybrid vehicle research, don't you think we'd already have big powerful SUVs that don't depend on oil? We'd have a cleaner country, consumers just as happy, and fewer foreign policy messes. What if we'd been doing that since 1920? Shouldn't we start now so we're not asking the same question again in 2040?
No, actually I don't think we would have that. This is a classical mistake - equating rate of spending money with the rate of resulting technological progress. One could argue, with exactly the same logic that you are using, that if we had invested all that money in medical research, we would all live forever. Or, we could argue that if we invested it all in telekinesis, we could all transport ourselves with no energy at all!
In other words, your argument makes a very dangerous assumption: more money can solve physical problems in a given period of time, regardless of whether they are ever solvable, or if they are solvable without the appearance of another Einstein.
Actually, governments and lots of private industry interests have spent huge amounts of money on alternative transportation energy systems. The reason is the potential enormous profits.
For exmaple, if a company could come up with a viable battery technology for electric cars, the other advantages of electric cars (very low cost and very low maintenance, outside of the battery; very good performance; mechanical simplicity) would cause them to fly out of the show-rooms! Everyone would wnat one, and everyone would buy one, and the car makers would immediatebly build a zillion of them.
With those sorts of profits at stake, the issue isn't the lack of investment, it's the difficulty of the technology!
Patents are issued for inventions. The use need not be specified, although it is usually included in the verbbiage.
Keep in mind that there are vast supplies of coal and oil shale. These can be converted into petroleum products for energy use. Arizona's Black Mesa has enough coal to fuel the US for 400 years.
These sources may keep hydrocarbons around for a long time.
Another trend is the end of the population explosion. Many contries in the world are now at negative population growth rates, and that trend is increasing rapidly.
Currently, it's cheaper to get gas - it costs Kuwait only $2/barrel for oil (the difference between that and the world price is all profit). Oil, as has been pointed out, is just too darn good, from an economic standpoint.
The biggest problem with alternative energy (including nuclear, which we *should* use a lot more of) is storage - especially for automotive uses. I simply do not foresee an adequate battery technology coming down the line. Fuel cells may eventually reach the cost, density and safety needs, and we could produce fuel using nuclear generated electricity.
All of this assumes enormous investments and drastic changes in very expensive infrastructure, so it is not going to happen any time soon.
Personally, I am for continuing the large levels of research into these techologies, but not for rationing (by price or any other way) oil for automotive use. The global warming arguments, even if valid, leave decades in which to start changing, and it would be foolish to destroy our economies (with the unpredictable political consequences - such as the rise of anti-environmental or even fascist governments).
I agree with those who want to put controls on telemarketing.
Until then, I use a TeleZapper (disclaimer - I have no monetary interest in this thing. I vaguely remember buying it a Radio Shack). It puts out a beep tone that sounds like a FAX answering.
At first there were a lot of hangups, as the computer dialers give up(and most telemarketers use computer dialers, even if the pitch is given by a human).
Over time, the number of calls has dropped significantly.
Unfortunately, it also blocks the computer calls from the public library which used to tell me when requested books had arrive. So its like Spam - any measure you take to deal with the a$$holes has side effects..
That's not the automated calling systems calling.
Thats the Homeland Security department checking to see if you are still there! So of course the numbers are blocked!
You did get rid of the Anthrax and VX, didn't you?
It's really very simple. Intuit has a huge market share in financial software. They are the Microsoft of personal and small business financial software (which is why Microsoft tried to buy them). If you run a small business, you raccountant will probably use QuickBooks or want you to. If you do electronic banking, there are usually only two choices of software: Intuit and Microsoft.
I would have dropped Intuit about a year ago when some of their behavior became disgusting, except they have me by the banking-relationship nads, for both Quicken and Quickbooks (unless I want to -ugh- go to Microsoft). It is still (barely) easier to go along with them than to fight.
Intuit has been acting nastier and nastier and sneakier and sneakier. They are trying their best to adopt a service business model - sucker you into all sorts of subscriptions and services - but in the process they are screwing up the lives of those of us who use their plain old software. When you ask Quickbooks to do a backup, the default (which it uses every time unless you override it) is to backup to their internet service. Ech! I have a much better internet service (connected.com - I have no relationship to them other than as a satisfied customer), and I don't WANT Quickbooks to do this. But just like Microsoft, they make the default something that ties you to yet another one of their products.
I am afraid that now that I have heard this latest, I will have to print out all my tax forms into PDF files to save, rather than just keeping the TurboTax files and programs like I have in the past.
And, of course, *next year* (too late for this year) I am seriously going to look into some competitor who is less arrogante and more friendly.