Not much more to say really, things are slowing down, improvements to products are minimal.
Actual, genuine newfangled technology what is there? Everything is an iteration upon an iteration.
We still use the microwave, we still use the freezer, the cooktop, the oven, we mostly use the combustion engine, we still mostly use steam for power plants, computers have gotten faster and we have LCD's now but nothing huge has hapenned, we don't have anti-gravity, we don't have teleportation, we can't change one thing in to another (easily), medically we still aren't growing replacement bodies.
Yes things have gotten better but I haven't seen a huge revoloutionary change to be honest in my lifetime, maybe the mobile phone I guess.
I'm not sure I understand why people complain about things like this. Yes, we still use the microwave. Know why? Because it works well at cooking certain foods. Yes, we still use the knife, an invention that's thousands of years old. We still use the knife because it's good at cutting things and there's no real reason to go back to the drawing board on that particular task. The fact that we are still using inventions that are old doesn't mean progress is slowing down, it means we're smart enough to know when to move on to something else.
In my life time I have seen technical advancements such as:
-Cloning
-Stem cell research (which WILL be a revolution I'm sure)
-The internet
-Cell phone
-Pictures from the surface of another planet
-Pictures of another planet from another solar system
Yeah, some of those might seem incremental, but everything always is. Technology doesn't ever undergo revolution, it undergoes evolution, as Issac Newton said "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Well that is why AGW became almost a religious issue. I think scientists overreached in trying to claim they can predict the long term climate when they can't accurately predict next week's climate.
Having said that your other point is well taken. Every major city in the US has smog levels at some time during the year that are "dangerously unhealthy". Not only that but you can SEE and CHOKE ON smog. You don't need to rely upon a complex computer program full of assumptions to know that smog sucks (same could be said of particulate pollution).
I wish all the energy that has been poured into AGW had instead been applied to smog, particulate pollution, mercury in fish, and other things that are far easier to demonstrate as "bad" and as a direct result of man's activities. Who would really complain if the President stood up and said "because our cities are being choked in a shroud of dangerous pollution that kills or impairs X people per year I am introducing new federal standards to etc etc etc".
My list would be:
SUVs are going away and a maximum weight is going to be applied to all passenger vehicles.
Diesel trucks will immediately come under the review of the EPA and will need to meet similar standards that passenger cars must meet.
All brake pads and tires sold in the US must meet stringent guidelines for the type of dust they produce.
All common sense items that would almost immediately begin to improve human health. Oh and they would also help reduce CO2 emissions dramatically. Reducing the emissions from other sources would be a longer term effort and I think that would need to be baked into legislation that mandates the use of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, biomass and geothermal.
The solutions here aren't all that hard. They are just politically unpopular because, for some reason, Americans think they have a God-given-right to drive 8000 lb cars.
"Well that is why AGW became almost a religious issue. I think scientists overreached in trying to claim they can predict the long term climate when they can't accurately predict next week's climate. "
Climate is long term patterns in the earth's atmosphere, so no, they couldn't predict next weeks climate because "next weeks climate" is more along the lines of atmospheric patterns of the short term, which would be more accurately defined as weather. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Hydrogen isn't a practical fuel right now for a number of reasons, two of them being that it's inefficient and costly to harvest H2 from water no matter which method used, and the second reason being that one of those methods for harvesting it requires fossil fuels.
Fast recharge times for electric cars are just a few years away with R&D where as efficient means of getting H2 are another 30 or 40 years away.
Not really. I can imagine this is going to scare every person naturally born with a penis into pushing for legistaltion against it. A good comparison is a nuclear bomb. If we actually use them, it would change the face of the earth, but we don't because it's wrong. Also, women still like men, as much as they don't want to admit it we still have natural urges to have sex and make babies the natural way.
Haven't these scientists learned from the various cartoons that feature this idea? It is quite possibly the worst idea ever. "Gee, it's pretty hot around here, why don't we just block out the sun har har har!" The amount of money it would take would probably be more than, say, creating a cleaner source of energy and letting our natural sun ray blocker to restore itself after awhile.
Well, if you want to play that game, cultural movements usually reflect the needs and values of the currently culture taking part in the given movement. Since our cultural values are centered around money, it makes total sense that corporations are the ones creating cultural movements.
The same argument could be made for hallucinogenics.
The internet only exposes you to conventional reality, but hallucinogenics expose you to true freedom and independence from reality!
Now, if the motivation behind this were to stop an influx of new ideas, they would have banned the internet, not stop people from using it. You can be exposed to new ideas within two minutes of the internet, not two days.
No, those are all valid reasons for not working as hard. We aren't machines. We need leisure time and a system of rewards, as opposed to a system of punishments, to work in the most productive manner. Most other countries similar to this country (such as those in Europe) work less hours than in America, have more vacation time, and have longer break time. In a lot of service and retail jobs, you don't get your 15 minute breaks, because a lot of the time you become too busy to stop working.
According to the writing of Darek Owens, in the essay "Work Never Ends," that is found his book Composition and Sustainability, we Americans work an average of 1,966 hours a year. That means we surpass the "workaholic" Japanese by nearly 70 hours, and Europeans by 350 hours. So this isn't the crying of brats, this is the venting of dehumanization, which does exist and a lot of what they are expressing is true for most Americans.
They almost have all of the entire electronics industry covered, ranging from entertainment set-top boxes, input devices, PDA's, operating systems, dial-up internet, web searching, web server software, and programming tools.
So, yes, MSN and Google are competing, in a few ways. Searching technology, Emailing, News, and quite a few of other things.
Slashdot Mirror
Flying cars-------Anti-gravity no but alterbative plane/cars are in progress.
Do you really want the average person to be able to have access to aircraft? I sure don't. Most people are stupid. Really, very stupid.
Not much more to say really, things are slowing down, improvements to products are minimal. Actual, genuine newfangled technology what is there? Everything is an iteration upon an iteration.
We still use the microwave, we still use the freezer, the cooktop, the oven, we mostly use the combustion engine, we still mostly use steam for power plants, computers have gotten faster and we have LCD's now but nothing huge has hapenned, we don't have anti-gravity, we don't have teleportation, we can't change one thing in to another (easily), medically we still aren't growing replacement bodies.
Yes things have gotten better but I haven't seen a huge revoloutionary change to be honest in my lifetime, maybe the mobile phone I guess.
I'm not sure I understand why people complain about things like this. Yes, we still use the microwave. Know why? Because it works well at cooking certain foods. Yes, we still use the knife, an invention that's thousands of years old. We still use the knife because it's good at cutting things and there's no real reason to go back to the drawing board on that particular task. The fact that we are still using inventions that are old doesn't mean progress is slowing down, it means we're smart enough to know when to move on to something else.
In my life time I have seen technical advancements such as:
-Cloning
-Stem cell research (which WILL be a revolution I'm sure)
-The internet
-Cell phone
-Pictures from the surface of another planet
-Pictures of another planet from another solar system
Yeah, some of those might seem incremental, but everything always is. Technology doesn't ever undergo revolution, it undergoes evolution, as Issac Newton said "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Well that is why AGW became almost a religious issue. I think scientists overreached in trying to claim they can predict the long term climate when they can't accurately predict next week's climate. Having said that your other point is well taken. Every major city in the US has smog levels at some time during the year that are "dangerously unhealthy". Not only that but you can SEE and CHOKE ON smog. You don't need to rely upon a complex computer program full of assumptions to know that smog sucks (same could be said of particulate pollution). I wish all the energy that has been poured into AGW had instead been applied to smog, particulate pollution, mercury in fish, and other things that are far easier to demonstrate as "bad" and as a direct result of man's activities. Who would really complain if the President stood up and said "because our cities are being choked in a shroud of dangerous pollution that kills or impairs X people per year I am introducing new federal standards to etc etc etc". My list would be:
All common sense items that would almost immediately begin to improve human health. Oh and they would also help reduce CO2 emissions dramatically. Reducing the emissions from other sources would be a longer term effort and I think that would need to be baked into legislation that mandates the use of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, biomass and geothermal. The solutions here aren't all that hard. They are just politically unpopular because, for some reason, Americans think they have a God-given-right to drive 8000 lb cars.
"Well that is why AGW became almost a religious issue. I think scientists overreached in trying to claim they can predict the long term climate when they can't accurately predict next week's climate. " Climate is long term patterns in the earth's atmosphere, so no, they couldn't predict next weeks climate because "next weeks climate" is more along the lines of atmospheric patterns of the short term, which would be more accurately defined as weather. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Hydrogen isn't a practical fuel right now for a number of reasons, two of them being that it's inefficient and costly to harvest H2 from water no matter which method used, and the second reason being that one of those methods for harvesting it requires fossil fuels. Fast recharge times for electric cars are just a few years away with R&D where as efficient means of getting H2 are another 30 or 40 years away.
They are not Homo Sapiens.
They are Homo neandertalinis.
Look it up!
And furthermore, humans are animals. So "not animals" only applies to plant life.
Fungi, protists, eubacteria, archaebacteria, are also not animal life.
Not really. I can imagine this is going to scare every person naturally born with a penis into pushing for legistaltion against it. A good comparison is a nuclear bomb. If we actually use them, it would change the face of the earth, but we don't because it's wrong. Also, women still like men, as much as they don't want to admit it we still have natural urges to have sex and make babies the natural way.
Haven't these scientists learned from the various cartoons that feature this idea? It is quite possibly the worst idea ever. "Gee, it's pretty hot around here, why don't we just block out the sun har har har!" The amount of money it would take would probably be more than, say, creating a cleaner source of energy and letting our natural sun ray blocker to restore itself after awhile.
Well, if you want to play that game, cultural movements usually reflect the needs and values of the currently culture taking part in the given movement. Since our cultural values are centered around money, it makes total sense that corporations are the ones creating cultural movements.
The same argument could be made for hallucinogenics.
The internet only exposes you to conventional reality, but hallucinogenics expose you to true freedom and independence from reality!
Now, if the motivation behind this were to stop an influx of new ideas, they would have banned the internet, not stop people from using it. You can be exposed to new ideas within two minutes of the internet, not two days.
I'd like to point out that the Bible has changed many times throughout it's lifetime.
http://myweb.lmu.edu/fjust/Bible/English_TranslatNo, those are all valid reasons for not working as hard. We aren't machines. We need leisure time and a system of rewards, as opposed to a system of punishments, to work in the most productive manner. Most other countries similar to this country (such as those in Europe) work less hours than in America, have more vacation time, and have longer break time. In a lot of service and retail jobs, you don't get your 15 minute breaks, because a lot of the time you become too busy to stop working.
According to the writing of Darek Owens, in the essay "Work Never Ends," that is found his book Composition and Sustainability, we Americans work an average of 1,966 hours a year. That means we surpass the "workaholic" Japanese by nearly 70 hours, and Europeans by 350 hours. So this isn't the crying of brats, this is the venting of dehumanization, which does exist and a lot of what they are expressing is true for most Americans.
Microsoft sells that too.
http://www.msn.com/
They almost have all of the entire electronics industry covered, ranging from entertainment set-top boxes, input devices, PDA's, operating systems, dial-up internet, web searching, web server software, and programming tools.
So, yes, MSN and Google are competing, in a few ways. Searching technology, Emailing, News, and quite a few of other things.