.... People are going to lose the ability to produce language?
Based on the written English skill I see here on Slashdot... yes.
(I'm aware there are plenty of non-native speakers here, but non-native speakers vs stupid native speakers actually make very different errors, and it's easy to tell which is which - there are a very great number of native speakers with EXTRAORDINARILY poor skills in English)
Sorry, but 10 hours on the Autobahn? How? I drove from Hannover to Augsburg in a little over 6 hours... much further and I'd be out of Germany (and therefore no longer on the Autobahn!)
All of the studies that I have seen about cell phone usage and driving have shown that drivers with "hands free" cell phones are no less distracted (read, "just as likely to hit obstacles and traffice cones) than those using hand held cell phones.
As other posters, and I myself, have pointed out to other comments like this (yes, I'm setting myself up to be modded redundant), it really depends if we're talking about automatic or manual transmission. The distraction from talking is the same, but changing gear with a phone in your hand, or nestled between your shoulder and head, is a FAR greater distraction. I'd be interested to see if this was taken in to account in such studies.
First you argue that driving requires only one hand, and then point out that the GP must think you therefore require two hands on the wheel all the time. But then you mention that this would make driving a manual transmission illegal. Ummm... do you think perhaps the GP might have meant that driving a manual transmission (which MOST people outside the US do) requires two hands and therefore holding the phone is dangerous? I actually half agree with you - driving an automatic transmission while using a hands-full phone is about the same level of risk as using a hands-free phone. However that only applies for automatics - for a manual, I think a hands-full phone is very dangerous.
(as a note: I live in Europe, where most people drive manuals, but I prefer, and drive, an automatic. Purely because I believe it is much safer under normal circumstances. I learned to drive in a manual, and have experience with some more advanced driving techniques, including drifting and other controlled slide techniques, but for my daily commute and even long journeys on the Autobahn, I prefer my automatic (which, by the way is a nice sporty looking convertible, so still has a reasonable "coolness" factor!))
(clarification: Many countries have a "maximum tint" level allowed. Pretty much for the reason you give, but some people also believe it's so the police and traffic cameras can see you. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any countries where the maximum tint is zero)
I'm living in one of the few countries not featuring a general speed limit. <snip> On the downside it takes more time and costs way more money to get a driver's license.
If you're living here in Germany, which I guess from your statements, I should point out that having lived in both Australia and Germany, you're right about the general skill of drivers, and the accident rates. However, while you're also right that it's far more expensive to get a license here in Germany (a process I'm going through at the moment, since Germany won't do an "exchange" of an Australian license), it's actually MUCH quicker. To go from "unlicensed" to "full license" in Australia takes around 3 and a half years with various restrictions at the different "levels" along the way.
The Australian system however does not make for better drivers - even after all the rigamarole, most of them are still pretty terrible. (although, it does vary a lot by city - Sydneysiders drive fast, and it scares people from elsewhere, but in general, I'd far rather drive in Sydney than Melbourne, where many people drive slower, but seem to have NO idea how to use their brakes properly, change lanes, or park.
An interesting tangent that I've noted is the relationship in countries between driving age and drinking age. In countries where you are allowed alcohol BEFORE you are allowed to operate a vehicle (e.g. Most of Europe), there seem to be a loss less alcohol related driving incidents than countries where you are allowed to drive well before you're allowed to drink (e.g. Australia or US). I put it down to the fact that young drivers in such countries become familiar with the effects of alcohol and are still not confident with driving, so are aware of how scary it would be to drive a car under the influence. But in the other countries (where you can drive first), young people think they are great drivers (having had a couple of years experience) and are not yet that familiar with the effects of alcohol, so are more likely to underestimate its effects when they get behind the wheel.
I'd be willing to bet that a lot of/.ers have better levels of concentration and skill than most, and would do just as well as me on that test.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I recall a thread a LONG time ago discussing distractions while coding. I was genuinely surprised that when most people are coding, if someone comes in and starts talking to them, they have to stop. For me, it's annoying that I have to re-focus part of myself on the conversation, but I'll continue coding while I have the conversation (which I'll try to end as quickly as possible).
To me, this indicates that I can multitask quite competently, however the obvious "re-focus" annoyance also shows that previously I was "multi-tasking" on the same task (ummm... "multi-threaded operation"). With coding, this sort of thing is normal, since it's a very complex task that requires keeping a lot of diferent things in your head at once. With driving, I think there are less things to concentrate on (operating the vehicle, watching other traffic, watching the road - any others?), so as long as you can handle those three to an optimum level, distractions should be no problem until they start to divert attention away from those.
Now, based on all this, my thoughts would be that it really depends on how MUCH you can multitask at once - I've listed 3 "tasks" for driving a vehicle, so if you can happily handle 5, that leaves one for conversation and one for listening to music without lessening your driving ability. However, if you can only handle 4, then having a conversation and listening to the radio will have to force you to switch out one of the others temporarily.
Note that when I talk about "switching out temporarily", I'm more or less meaning time sharing of that thread for multiple tasks, not that you have to stop doing it completely in order to do the other thing completely.
That's about the best "software" model I can give of it, and I probably didn't explain it as well as what's in my head, but I hope it makes sense to most people reading it.
Speaking from experience... driving on most amphetamines is a REALLY bad idea. Overconfidence, other effects of the drug not directly related to the "pick me up" (e.g. the very minor hallucinogenic effects of MDMA), and physical jitteriness are all things that cause problems for operating a vehicle.
That said, it's still probably better than driving while extra-ordinarily tired (to the point that you're falling asleep at the wheel).
Oh, and as a tangent, also from experience, driving on actual hallucinogens is also REALLY REALLY bad (although I guess that's probably obvious).
Re:CO Voters: Reject Richard Gabriel in Nov. 2010!
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RIAA Lawyer Jumps Ship
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That's probably true, but it's not what they tell people immigrating to Australia... they tell you that as an Australian citizen, you MUST vote. (I'm speaking from experience here - for some moronic reason, I decided to become an Australian citizen around 2002 or so. I don't even live there anymore now.)
As for not chasing fines... well, they chased me pretty doggedly when I completely failed to notice a STATE election going on... I can imagine they'd chase a bit harder for a Federal one.
Also, the last election was somewhat of a special case I think - historically, you'd have to agree that most Aussies are far too underinformed before they cast their vote (which, I believe, nearly everyone does, despite the option you mentioned)
Hmmm... seems I stand corrected. Thankyou! Linguistics is a hobby of mine, but as I no longer live in an English speaking country, I've been spending most of my time recently studying the finer details of the German language instead.
Historically, it depends where in the UK we're talking about... a few years back, I'd bet terrorism over dog poop any day of the week in Northern Ireland. But if we're talking rural Sussex, the dog poop is probably a great deal more likely than terrorism.
Did you know that if you take 666^666, convert it to binary, cut it into 7-bit sequences, and map them to the ascii table, that it spells out the words to "Stars are Blind" by Paris Hilton in reverse? No it doesn't... According to Mathematica 666^666 in binary starts off with 11001011000101111010011111000101, which doesn't fit your ASCII idea in 7bit or 8bit I'm afraid.
Seriously, I'm not making this up!
The parenthesised words can be removed if they are convicted.
I'm nitpicking here, but I disagree that just because someone has "legally" done something, that they actually did it. So I'd keep the word "allegedly" even for convicted criminals unless I personally was sure of the crime (e.g. witnessed it with my own eyes)
I'm not sure it was eloquent really... unintentional seems pretty likely, but the CCTVs aren't profligating anything, so the sentence is actually essentially meaningless.
Also, "profligating" isn't an adjective, it's the present participle of "profligate" in a continuous sense (as I would read it, assuming I didn't know what the OP actually meant, and assumed they did actually intend to write "profligating").
Cheap +5 Insightful: just say "All Americans suck because {insert generalization here}"
All Americans suck because they think that you can get a +5 Insightful for saying all Americans suck.
Re:CO Voters: Reject Richard Gabriel in Nov. 2010!
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Maybe it's irresponsible, but if I have the option between making an uninformed decision and not making one at all, I'll usually choose the latter.
It's not irresponsible at all, in fact, it's the most responsible course of action to take. If you don't have enough information to choose, don't choose!
This is a huge problem in Australia, where citizens are FORCED to vote (you are fined if you don't). A VERY great number of people are totally apathetic about politics, and so simply pick the name they heard most recently in a positive light. These same people, if they weren't forced to vote, would stay at home on voting day and have a BBQ. Then, everyone who actually understands what the politicians have been saying can go and cast their vote and it will have MEANING and BE HEARD instead of being drowned out by 10 million votes from people who would rather be at home BBQing (and there's nothing wrong with that either, I should say).
So, does anyone find StreetView genuinely useful enough to be worth all the privacy hassle?
I would/will find it useful if/when it covers German cities. I'm not a native of this country (or Europe, or even the Northern Hemisphere for that matter) and sometimes a map just isn't enough. The satellite view on Google Maps is handy, but still not quite good enough, since rooftops can look quite different to the view from below.
The problem comes when I have a hard time identifying something that I see with my own eyes as being a street or not. That's a lot more common than you'd think here! Especially near the centre of large cities.
If I had streetview to help, I would know it's "the first big red brick building on the left after the pretty looking church, just across the road from that department store where I bought my shoes", which is a lot more handy than a point on a map!
In the world, there are on average 5 births and 3 deaths per second
I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have a cite for this? I've read elsewhere that the death rate is at around 150000 a day. That works out to only a bit under 2 deaths per second, which is significantly less than your figure of 3.
I don't have any figures off the top of my head regarding birth rates, and I'm too lazy right now to look it up.
Correct, but irrelevant. In nature, a species often dies when it doesn't "play nice" with the rest of the environment. We are definitely a part of the natural universe, but that doesn't mean we're preferred in it.
Call me humano-centric, but I prefer to survive.
2. There have been many people who forecast apocalypse and were wrong. In fact, ALL of them. This does not preclude an apolalypse, it only shows that prophets have a burden of proof they must live up to before we take their predictions seriously.
Somewhat correct. There have been many "earth ending prophecies", and none of them have come true. There have also been forecasts of less global catastrophes and some of them have been wrong, while some of them have been right. You pretty much ignored a poster who pointed a couple of these out because he didn't "prophecise" them himself. I didn't either, but some people did, and they were right!
Also, the "burden of proof", I believe has been more than met for the subjects of climate change and overpopulation. Both of these are serious issues that need to be ACTIVELY dealt with if we want to survive with a reasonable way of life. If a very large number of people die, I fully expect that humanity will indeed keep going, but that's NOT a world I want to live in if it can be avoided! (if it can't be avoided, I certainly won't commit suicide given that I'm one of the lucky few survivors, but I still won't be happy about it)
3. We have NO idea what the world or humanity will be like in 20 years. Let alone a few hundred! Yes, it's true that we can guess at the rate of population growth. Unfortunately, we have no idea what those guesses mean. Will a super-virus arise next year which happens to kill 6,666,600,000 of us? Good thing we had backups!
We have backups? Sorry?
You're right that we can't accurately foretell the future, but we can make reasonable assumptions and can base things on these assumptions. It's possible that a major event of some kind will render our predictions worthless, but what if a major event does NOT happen? In those cases, our predictions are fairly likely to have a reasonable degree of accuracy.
4. The people who make these claims implicity assume that they are the ones who are qualified to fix the crisis. This "prophet syndrome" is an unfortunately contageous disease lately. Case in point, the original post where the poster implicity takes credit for prophesying the devestation from Katrina. Did this person actually do so? Not likely. Although they're happy to take credit and use it to bolster their argument. And nobody ever bothers to say anything.
NOT TRUE. I make these claims and I KNOW I am not qualified to fix them alone. However, we, as a species, need to do something - and I will add my voice to those who agree to try and push the people that CAN do something about it to actually do so. For "lesser things", I will also do my part by not excessively breeding, using less petrol where I can and so on.
5. Let us say that in 30 years we all use 1/100th of our current calorie intake because we are hooked into computer networks, similar to The Matrix. Nobody leaves the rock at all, in fact, we wander pristine mountain meadows as the only being alive in the world! If we want to. I don't say this will be true, only that it is one solution to the problem. The point is, we have no idea. And tyrants who wish to rule on the basis of half-assed prophecies are totally full of it.
Yes, the "Matrix Solution" may be one solution... but see my point above about "world changing events" - what if we DON'T get the technology for a "Matrix Solution", or any other great tech to save us all... nor does any natural disaster happen to kill a significant number of us? What then? We must plan for this, as it is both the most likely scenario, and also the only one we can effectively plan for. If we're wrong, fine, we're wrong. But if we're right, it saves our species.
Do you really think we will all be living on this planet after 50 years?
Unfortunately, yes I do. As a child, I had high hopes that we were entering our space-faring days, but it seems it's all gone completely the wrong direction for far too long. There are glimmers of hope now that a direction change may be imminent, but it'll be more than 50 years before we have a significant population on anything other than this pale blue dot that we live on.
We're experiencing a food shortage here in the EU? Wow... news to me. I seem to be able to get all the food I want, at really cheap prices and most of it is of a very high standard.
(Sorry, I know you meant the food shortage in the third world countries, and I actually agree with you completely, I was just making a (fairly lame) joke based on the ambiguity of the way you phrased it.)
Slashdot Mirror
.... People are going to lose the ability to produce language?Based on the written English skill I see here on Slashdot... yes.
(I'm aware there are plenty of non-native speakers here, but non-native speakers vs stupid native speakers actually make very different errors, and it's easy to tell which is which - there are a very great number of native speakers with EXTRAORDINARILY poor skills in English)
Yep! Actually, make the drinking age lower (around 16) and the driving age higher (around 18). See my post here
Sorry, but 10 hours on the Autobahn? How? I drove from Hannover to Augsburg in a little over 6 hours... much further and I'd be out of Germany (and therefore no longer on the Autobahn!)
As other posters, and I myself, have pointed out to other comments like this (yes, I'm setting myself up to be modded redundant), it really depends if we're talking about automatic or manual transmission. The distraction from talking is the same, but changing gear with a phone in your hand, or nestled between your shoulder and head, is a FAR greater distraction. I'd be interested to see if this was taken in to account in such studies.
First you argue that driving requires only one hand, and then point out that the GP must think you therefore require two hands on the wheel all the time. But then you mention that this would make driving a manual transmission illegal.
Ummm... do you think perhaps the GP might have meant that driving a manual transmission (which MOST people outside the US do) requires two hands and therefore holding the phone is dangerous? I actually half agree with you - driving an automatic transmission while using a hands-full phone is about the same level of risk as using a hands-free phone. However that only applies for automatics - for a manual, I think a hands-full phone is very dangerous.
(as a note: I live in Europe, where most people drive manuals, but I prefer, and drive, an automatic. Purely because I believe it is much safer under normal circumstances. I learned to drive in a manual, and have experience with some more advanced driving techniques, including drifting and other controlled slide techniques, but for my daily commute and even long journeys on the Autobahn, I prefer my automatic (which, by the way is a nice sporty looking convertible, so still has a reasonable "coolness" factor!))
Some countries do!
(clarification: Many countries have a "maximum tint" level allowed. Pretty much for the reason you give, but some people also believe it's so the police and traffic cameras can see you. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any countries where the maximum tint is zero)
If you're living here in Germany, which I guess from your statements, I should point out that having lived in both Australia and Germany, you're right about the general skill of drivers, and the accident rates. However, while you're also right that it's far more expensive to get a license here in Germany (a process I'm going through at the moment, since Germany won't do an "exchange" of an Australian license), it's actually MUCH quicker. To go from "unlicensed" to "full license" in Australia takes around 3 and a half years with various restrictions at the different "levels" along the way.
The Australian system however does not make for better drivers - even after all the rigamarole, most of them are still pretty terrible. (although, it does vary a lot by city - Sydneysiders drive fast, and it scares people from elsewhere, but in general, I'd far rather drive in Sydney than Melbourne, where many people drive slower, but seem to have NO idea how to use their brakes properly, change lanes, or park.
An interesting tangent that I've noted is the relationship in countries between driving age and drinking age. In countries where you are allowed alcohol BEFORE you are allowed to operate a vehicle (e.g. Most of Europe), there seem to be a loss less alcohol related driving incidents than countries where you are allowed to drive well before you're allowed to drink (e.g. Australia or US). I put it down to the fact that young drivers in such countries become familiar with the effects of alcohol and are still not confident with driving, so are aware of how scary it would be to drive a car under the influence. But in the other countries (where you can drive first), young people think they are great drivers (having had a couple of years experience) and are not yet that familiar with the effects of alcohol, so are more likely to underestimate its effects when they get behind the wheel.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I recall a thread a LONG time ago discussing distractions while coding. I was genuinely surprised that when most people are coding, if someone comes in and starts talking to them, they have to stop. For me, it's annoying that I have to re-focus part of myself on the conversation, but I'll continue coding while I have the conversation (which I'll try to end as quickly as possible).
To me, this indicates that I can multitask quite competently, however the obvious "re-focus" annoyance also shows that previously I was "multi-tasking" on the same task (ummm... "multi-threaded operation"). With coding, this sort of thing is normal, since it's a very complex task that requires keeping a lot of diferent things in your head at once.
With driving, I think there are less things to concentrate on (operating the vehicle, watching other traffic, watching the road - any others?), so as long as you can handle those three to an optimum level, distractions should be no problem until they start to divert attention away from those.
Now, based on all this, my thoughts would be that it really depends on how MUCH you can multitask at once - I've listed 3 "tasks" for driving a vehicle, so if you can happily handle 5, that leaves one for conversation and one for listening to music without lessening your driving ability. However, if you can only handle 4, then having a conversation and listening to the radio will have to force you to switch out one of the others temporarily.
Note that when I talk about "switching out temporarily", I'm more or less meaning time sharing of that thread for multiple tasks, not that you have to stop doing it completely in order to do the other thing completely.
That's about the best "software" model I can give of it, and I probably didn't explain it as well as what's in my head, but I hope it makes sense to most people reading it.
Speaking from experience... driving on most amphetamines is a REALLY bad idea. Overconfidence, other effects of the drug not directly related to the "pick me up" (e.g. the very minor hallucinogenic effects of MDMA), and physical jitteriness are all things that cause problems for operating a vehicle.
That said, it's still probably better than driving while extra-ordinarily tired (to the point that you're falling asleep at the wheel).
Oh, and as a tangent, also from experience, driving on actual hallucinogens is also REALLY REALLY bad (although I guess that's probably obvious).
That's probably true, but it's not what they tell people immigrating to Australia... they tell you that as an Australian citizen, you MUST vote. (I'm speaking from experience here - for some moronic reason, I decided to become an Australian citizen around 2002 or so. I don't even live there anymore now.)
As for not chasing fines... well, they chased me pretty doggedly when I completely failed to notice a STATE election going on... I can imagine they'd chase a bit harder for a Federal one.
Also, the last election was somewhat of a special case I think - historically, you'd have to agree that most Aussies are far too underinformed before they cast their vote (which, I believe, nearly everyone does, despite the option you mentioned)
Hmmm... seems I stand corrected. Thankyou! Linguistics is a hobby of mine, but as I no longer live in an English speaking country, I've been spending most of my time recently studying the finer details of the German language instead.
Historically, it depends where in the UK we're talking about... a few years back, I'd bet terrorism over dog poop any day of the week in Northern Ireland. But if we're talking rural Sussex, the dog poop is probably a great deal more likely than terrorism.
Yes you are, and I was crazy enough to prove it!
I'm nitpicking here, but I disagree that just because someone has "legally" done something, that they actually did it. So I'd keep the word "allegedly" even for convicted criminals unless I personally was sure of the crime (e.g. witnessed it with my own eyes)
I'm not sure it was eloquent really... unintentional seems pretty likely, but the CCTVs aren't profligating anything, so the sentence is actually essentially meaningless.
Also, "profligating" isn't an adjective, it's the present participle of "profligate" in a continuous sense (as I would read it, assuming I didn't know what the OP actually meant, and assumed they did actually intend to write "profligating").
But yes, I'm nitpicking.
All Americans suck because they think that you can get a +5 Insightful for saying all Americans suck.
It's not irresponsible at all, in fact, it's the most responsible course of action to take. If you don't have enough information to choose, don't choose!
This is a huge problem in Australia, where citizens are FORCED to vote (you are fined if you don't). A VERY great number of people are totally apathetic about politics, and so simply pick the name they heard most recently in a positive light. These same people, if they weren't forced to vote, would stay at home on voting day and have a BBQ. Then, everyone who actually understands what the politicians have been saying can go and cast their vote and it will have MEANING and BE HEARD instead of being drowned out by 10 million votes from people who would rather be at home BBQing (and there's nothing wrong with that either, I should say).
Clearly you've not been to Paris at 2am... PLENTY of people still about in some areas.
I would/will find it useful if/when it covers German cities. I'm not a native of this country (or Europe, or even the Northern Hemisphere for that matter) and sometimes a map just isn't enough. The satellite view on Google Maps is handy, but still not quite good enough, since rooftops can look quite different to the view from below.
The problem comes when I have a hard time identifying something that I see with my own eyes as being a street or not. That's a lot more common than you'd think here! Especially near the centre of large cities.
If I had streetview to help, I would know it's "the first big red brick building on the left after the pretty looking church, just across the road from that department store where I bought my shoes", which is a lot more handy than a point on a map!
I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have a cite for this? I've read elsewhere that the death rate is at around 150000 a day. That works out to only a bit under 2 deaths per second, which is significantly less than your figure of 3.
I don't have any figures off the top of my head regarding birth rates, and I'm too lazy right now to look it up.
They weren't cows inside - they were waiting to be, but they forgot. Now they see sky, and remember what they are.
(I thought it appropriate, given your sig)
Correct, but irrelevant. In nature, a species often dies when it doesn't "play nice" with the rest of the environment. We are definitely a part of the natural universe, but that doesn't mean we're preferred in it.
Call me humano-centric, but I prefer to survive.
2. There have been many people who forecast apocalypse and were wrong. In fact, ALL of them. This does not preclude an apolalypse, it only shows that prophets have a burden of proof they must live up to before we take their predictions seriously.Somewhat correct. There have been many "earth ending prophecies", and none of them have come true. There have also been forecasts of less global catastrophes and some of them have been wrong, while some of them have been right. You pretty much ignored a poster who pointed a couple of these out because he didn't "prophecise" them himself. I didn't either, but some people did, and they were right!
Also, the "burden of proof", I believe has been more than met for the subjects of climate change and overpopulation. Both of these are serious issues that need to be ACTIVELY dealt with if we want to survive with a reasonable way of life. If a very large number of people die, I fully expect that humanity will indeed keep going, but that's NOT a world I want to live in if it can be avoided! (if it can't be avoided, I certainly won't commit suicide given that I'm one of the lucky few survivors, but I still won't be happy about it)
3. We have NO idea what the world or humanity will be like in 20 years. Let alone a few hundred! Yes, it's true that we can guess at the rate of population growth. Unfortunately, we have no idea what those guesses mean. Will a super-virus arise next year which happens to kill 6,666,600,000 of us? Good thing we had backups!We have backups? Sorry?
You're right that we can't accurately foretell the future, but we can make reasonable assumptions and can base things on these assumptions. It's possible that a major event of some kind will render our predictions worthless, but what if a major event does NOT happen? In those cases, our predictions are fairly likely to have a reasonable degree of accuracy.
4. The people who make these claims implicity assume that they are the ones who are qualified to fix the crisis. This "prophet syndrome" is an unfortunately contageous disease lately. Case in point, the original post where the poster implicity takes credit for prophesying the devestation from Katrina. Did this person actually do so? Not likely. Although they're happy to take credit and use it to bolster their argument. And nobody ever bothers to say anything.NOT TRUE. I make these claims and I KNOW I am not qualified to fix them alone. However, we, as a species, need to do something - and I will add my voice to those who agree to try and push the people that CAN do something about it to actually do so. For "lesser things", I will also do my part by not excessively breeding, using less petrol where I can and so on.
5. Let us say that in 30 years we all use 1/100th of our current calorie intake because we are hooked into computer networks, similar to The Matrix. Nobody leaves the rock at all, in fact, we wander pristine mountain meadows as the only being alive in the world! If we want to. I don't say this will be true, only that it is one solution to the problem. The point is, we have no idea. And tyrants who wish to rule on the basis of half-assed prophecies are totally full of it.Yes, the "Matrix Solution" may be one solution... but see my point above about "world changing events" - what if we DON'T get the technology for a "Matrix Solution", or any other great tech to save us all... nor does any natural disaster happen to kill a significant number of us? What then? We must plan for this, as it is both the most likely scenario, and also the only one we can effectively plan for. If we're wrong, fine, we're wrong. But if we're right, it saves our species.
Have a little perspective, please!
Unfortunately, yes I do. As a child, I had high hopes that we were entering our space-faring days, but it seems it's all gone completely the wrong direction for far too long. There are glimmers of hope now that a direction change may be imminent, but it'll be more than 50 years before we have a significant population on anything other than this pale blue dot that we live on.
If the parent doesn't get +5 funny, all the mods should be lined up and shot...
Or just sent to the 4 raves in question.
We're experiencing a food shortage here in the EU? Wow... news to me. I seem to be able to get all the food I want, at really cheap prices and most of it is of a very high standard.
(Sorry, I know you meant the food shortage in the third world countries, and I actually agree with you completely, I was just making a (fairly lame) joke based on the ambiguity of the way you phrased it.)