Poll

8 votes (20%)
6 votes (15%)
7 votes (17.5%)
1 vote (2.5%)
5 votes (12.5%)
2 votes (5%)
11 votes (27.5%)

40 members have voted

discflicker
discflicker
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February 12th, 2011 at 2:17:58 PM permalink
mkl

The paragraph that he personally pushed through legislation states that the process of fractional injection harvesting of natural gas is excluded from any environmental impact investigations, INCLUDING the clean water act.

Why would anyone do such a thing? If your answer is to free us from dependance on foreighn oil, then I will get too upset to continue this conversation.

Yes he IS the devil. WORSE!

Before you reply why don't you investigate what I'm saying.

And this is only an example of the onslaught I'm talking about, its one that we (now, finally) know about. For every one like this, I bet there are a dozen like it that we don't know about.
The difference between zero and the smallest possible number? It doesn't matter; once you cross that edge, it might as well be the difference between zero and 1. The difference between infinity and reality? They are mutually exclusive.
pacomartin
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February 12th, 2011 at 3:22:35 PM permalink
Quote: discflicker

If its abortion, then yes, that's one good way to try to EXTEND our time on Earth.



Not abortion, but it was a manmade catstrophe and not a natural one.

I am not leading to religion here, except God protect us from egomaniacs who tend to get into power.
discflicker
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February 12th, 2011 at 3:30:42 PM permalink
Quote: pacomartin

Not abortion, but it was a manmade catstrophe and not a natural one.

I am not leading to religion here, except God protect us from egomaniacs who tend to get into power.




Yes, even I'll agree to an ah-men on that.



So what was it? WWII ? Birth control?
The difference between zero and the smallest possible number? It doesn't matter; once you cross that edge, it might as well be the difference between zero and 1. The difference between infinity and reality? They are mutually exclusive.
pacomartin
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February 12th, 2011 at 4:51:34 PM permalink
Quote: discflicker

So what was it? WWII ? Birth control?



By 1960 there was no trace of WWII, and mass birth control was in it's infancy.

It was a rush to industrialization in China as Mao tried to convert a rural population to an industrial society very fast. There was a rush to build mini-blast furnaces. The lack of farmers in the field meant the crops didn't come in and millions of people starved in the greatest famine the world had ever seen. Also tens of millions of babies were not born. The impact was at several times greater than WWII on European and American societies (excluding Russia).

But even that tragedy could not stop world growth, just slow it for three years.

For about the last 15 years (and projected for the next 40 years) worldwide births have leveled off at about 11 million per month. They are not going down, but neither are they going up despite the fact that there are more and more women in the world. Deaths will slowly climb from present numbers to catch up to 11 million per month in about a half a century. However, since an increasing number of the births are in sub-Saharan Africa and on the Indian subcontinent, and an increasing number of the deaths are elsewhere, the population percentage on each continent will shift dramatically.

So when you hear that population growth is decreasing for the last half century, keep in mind that the absolute numbers of births have simply leveled off.
mkl654321
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February 12th, 2011 at 4:56:21 PM permalink
Quote: discflicker

mkl

The paragraph that he personally pushed through legislation states that the process of fractional injection harvesting of natural gas is excluded from any environmental impact investigations, INCLUDING the clean water act.

Why would anyone do such a thing? If your answer is to free us from dependance on foreighn oil, then I will get too upset to continue this conversation.

Yes he IS the devil. WORSE!

Before you reply why don't you investigate what I'm saying.

And this is only an example of the onslaught I'm talking about, its one that we (now, finally) know about. For every one like this, I bet there are a dozen like it that we don't know about.



The silly fiction is that this is an evil plot hatched by the evil Dick Cheney to destroy the world. The bill no doubt had several hundred collective authors, and by the time it got to Cheney, had been seen and reviewed by thousands of people. Whatever you think of the bill itself (and your attitude is clear on that), it's ridiculous to give Cheney more than about 1% of the blame, or credit, whichever you want.

I would also gently suggest that there might be practical reasons for the legislation. I don't know enough about natural gas recovery techniques to say one way or the other, and I doubt that you do, either. There might be a clause in that environmental legislation that hamstrings natural gas development, but to no real benefit. I think that saying that Cheney is an evil tool of the greedy, rapacious energy companies, and both he and they hate the environment and want to destroy it, is in equal parts silly, simplistic, and populist (and the three terms are largely synonymous).
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.---George Bernard Shaw
discflicker
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February 13th, 2011 at 2:36:01 AM permalink
silly, simplistic, and populist

AND TRUE


Did you research this before you replied? Be honest.
The difference between zero and the smallest possible number? It doesn't matter; once you cross that edge, it might as well be the difference between zero and 1. The difference between infinity and reality? They are mutually exclusive.
Face
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February 13th, 2011 at 5:52:46 AM permalink
Quote: pacomartin

It was a rush to industrialization in China as Mao tried to convert a rural population to an industrial society very fast. There was a rush to build mini-blast furnaces. The lack of farmers in the field meant the crops didn't come in and millions of people starved in the greatest famine the world had ever seen. Also tens of millions of babies were not born. The impact was at several times greater than WWII on European and American societies (excluding Russia).

But even that tragedy could not stop world growth, just slow it for three years.



ONE man, in ONE country, made ONE decision, which impacted world population on the level of the bloodiest battle or the worst plaque the world has ever seen? Now THAT'S food for thought.
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pacomartin
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February 13th, 2011 at 10:41:36 AM permalink
Quote: Face

ONE man, in ONE country, made ONE decision, which impacted world population on the level of the bloodiest battle or the worst plaque the world has ever seen? Now THAT'S food for thought.



A six minute documentary summarizing the core points of the Great Leap Forward debacle that killed almost 30 million people, the most disastrous event of the post World War II war, with a loss of life several times that of the holocaust.

You will note that the documentary has less than a thousand views. Ask your friends what they know about "The Great Leap Forward". You will be very lucky if 1 in 10 people even know what you are talking about.
clarkacal
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February 13th, 2011 at 10:47:04 AM permalink
Quote: pacomartin

A six minute documentary summarizing the core points of the Great Leap Forward debacle that killed almost 30 million people, the most disastrous event of the post World War II war, with a loss of life several times that of the holocaust.

You will note that the documentary has less than a thousand views. Ask your friends what they know about "The Great Leap Forward". You will be very lucky if 1 in 10 people even know what you are talking about.



Why are there no movies/documentaries/time life books/memorials/museums for this?
mkl654321
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February 13th, 2011 at 11:47:41 AM permalink
Quote: clarkacal

Quote: pacomartin

A six minute documentary summarizing the core points of the Great Leap Forward debacle that killed almost 30 million people, the most disastrous event of the post World War II war, with a loss of life several times that of the holocaust.

You will note that the documentary has less than a thousand views. Ask your friends what they know about "The Great Leap Forward". You will be very lucky if 1 in 10 people even know what you are talking about.



Why are there no movies/documentaries/time life books/memorials/museums for this?



Because it was Chinese people who died, and not as a result of any single spectacular event or events, but the slow strangling of lives and human potential. Both the race of the victims and the non-dramatic nature of their demise means that the story of their deaths draws far less attention in the West than it otherwise might.

And of course, there are no CHINESE memorials or monuments to those victims, because that same government (minus Mao) is still in place, and thinks that Mao's genocidal policies were wise and benevolent and ultimately contributed to the greatness of the Chinese nation. If there's one thing that that government NEVER does, it's admit that it ever made, or makes, a mistake.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.---George Bernard Shaw
pacomartin
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February 13th, 2011 at 1:30:34 PM permalink
Quote: clarkacal

Why are there no movies/documentaries/time life books/memorials/museums for this?



I am not completely sure. The forced famine of 1932-33 in the Ukraine gets fairly good coverage, although the majority of people have never heard of that. The death toll was a fraction of the Mao's Great Leap Forward.

People collectively do not dwell on things proportional to their impact on humanity. No doubt the holocaust remains as the worst tragedy in the modern world, because so many Jewish people in the USA have positions of great influence in the arts and publications. I used to work with a Lithuanian who escaped after WWII, and he always commented that he wandered why Adolf Hitler was the great monster of WWII and Josef Stalin seemed to get off so easily.

But the "Great Leap Foward Famine" has always stayed with me for four reasons:
1) it is so unknown for a recent event,
2) there was no direct agression,
3) the nominal intentions were very high, and
4) the death toll (and impact on birth rates) was so high.

If you've ever been caught in a riot (as I have), you realize how thin is the veneer of civilization.
thecesspit
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February 13th, 2011 at 4:03:39 PM permalink
Quote: mkl654321

And of course, there are no CHINESE memorials or monuments to those victims, because that same government (minus Mao) is still in place, and thinks that Mao's genocidal policies were wise and benevolent and ultimately contributed to the greatness of the Chinese nation. If there's one thing that that government NEVER does, it's admit that it ever made, or makes, a mistake.



Deng Xiaoping was marginalized during the Great Leap Forward, rose to prominence after the disaster in reforming China screwed up economy, then removed and cleansed by Mao as part of the Cultural Revolution, which was Mao's fight back against the less ultra leftist Communists in the party. Xiaoping then revoered and came back after Mao's death and practically lead the Chinese Communist Party, and while being a lefty red commie, certainly had something to do with China's move to wards a more marketist economy (less planning of demand, as I understand it).

After the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party laid the blame of the violence and deaths mostly at Mao's door, though they also blamed other elements in the Communist Party (Lin Bao and the Gang of Four). Official Chinese history, as I understand it, certianly does not ignore either of the two periods, or not claim that there was no screw up. Mao's legacy is from prior to around Leap Forward.

Of course, the Chinese government would really be hailing those who rescued the country from other people's mistakes (and the government today is certainly in the Xiaoping mode not Chairman Mao's).

Lysenko's pseuo-science of agriculture was not only behind the Great Leap Forward, but also the starvation in the Ukraine, and also some of his theories seem to have transferred in Pol Pot's thinking during the Khmer Rouge's years in Cambodia as he strove for an agrarian-driven economy. He's possibly the single "scientist" whose (politically motivated) scientific theories have done the most harm over the last 100 years.

{for some reason, I've read a fair amount of Communist Revolutionary history over the last two years, which is why some of this stuck in my head}
"Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither eaten, slept, thought nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup at trente-et-quarante" - Honore de Balzac, 1829
P90
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February 13th, 2011 at 4:29:36 PM permalink
Quote: pacomartin

I used to work with a Lithuanian who escaped after WWII, and he always commented that he wandered why Adolf Hitler was the great monster of WWII and Josef Stalin seemed to get off so easily.


I don't think it's such a great mystery. First of all, while Stalin's and Mao's methods were about as objectionable, their goals were mostly the same as any leader's, not anywhere near Hitler's movie-grade supervillainy. Second, the scope of their actions was predominantly internal, while the Axis brought destruction on other nations.

Now, what surprises me is how Hirohito got off pretty much perfectly clean, despite Japanese atrocities in China not lagging behind German ones neither in scope nor in brutality.
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rxwine
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February 13th, 2011 at 5:00:25 PM permalink
Quote: P90

Now, what surprises me is how Hirohito got off pretty much perfectly clean, despite Japanese atrocities in China not lagging behind German ones neither in scope nor in brutality.




Maybe he cut a deal with the allied forces.

Aren't there still some things still classified from WW2? I occasionally see news items of something released from way back that's just now seeing the light of day in the public domain.
There's no secret. Just know what you're talking about before you open your mouth.
slyther
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February 14th, 2011 at 10:32:22 AM permalink
Other: Proliferation of 6/5 blackjack :)
thecesspit
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February 14th, 2011 at 11:05:21 AM permalink
Quote: rxwine

Maybe he cut a deal with the allied forces.

Aren't there still some things still classified from WW2? I occasionally see news items of something released from way back that's just now seeing the light of day in the public domain.



Hirohito was seen as a figured head rather than the instigator. I don't know how TRUE that is. I also know there's plenty of British POWs who died years later hating the Japanese, and going out of their way to snub any state visit by the Emperor or Prime Minister for their refusal to apologize for the atrocities committed on the POWs in the Far East.
"Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither eaten, slept, thought nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup at trente-et-quarante" - Honore de Balzac, 1829
98Clubs
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January 11th, 2013 at 1:12:53 PM permalink
I know this post is as dead as J. Marley, but I stumbled upon it during a search.

I vote Starquake in the Sun. I guess thats classified as natural, but so is the Yellowstone SuperVolcano. Torn between which one will happen first, but Yosemite is starting to bulge.
Some people need to reimagine their thinking.
s2dbaker
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January 11th, 2013 at 1:19:28 PM permalink
Quote: clarkacal

What do you predict to be the end of mankind, hopefully way off into the future?

I like that one of the choices is Jesus. I was going to choose that one because it's the funniest.

Imagine if the all powerful but benevolent Jesus came back to Earth and decided that all of humanity should be wiped out,
"I AM THE JESUS AND I HATE HUMANS THEREFOR YOU MUST ALL DIE!!"

It made me giggle :)

But I went with natural disaster. I think it would take an asteroid to kill all of the humans, not even a war could do that.
Someday, joor goin' to see the name of Googie Gomez in lights and joor goin' to say to joorself, "Was that her?" and then joor goin' to answer to joorself, "That was her!" But you know somethin' mister? I was always her yuss nobody knows it! - Googie Gomez
EvenBob
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January 11th, 2013 at 1:23:05 PM permalink
Quote: s2dbaker



But I went with natural disaster. I think it would take an asteroid to kill all of the humans, not even a war could do that.



I'm going with ape mutations, like the movies. That
would be pretty cool..
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GH
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January 11th, 2013 at 1:30:54 PM permalink
If The Singularity occurs on time, just think of what it will do for AP.
98Clubs
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January 11th, 2013 at 2:15:36 PM permalink
The only problem I have is that the conventional IC can only sustain a transistor of a certain size. At some point we must alter from electrical to chemical. I believe the sustanence/flipping of a magnetic field will quickly be a "moot route", quantum or not. Light has good potential, but we need to couple/map visible spectra to voltage more efficiently. Photo-electric (frequency raising) looks to be a more viable path to chemical by photo electric to photo chemical conversion.

So back on topic my third choice is anti-matter weaponry. Someone very early on said something like "the atom bombs in the next war"... That which powers Star trek, might first extinguish 80% of us.
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98Clubs
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January 11th, 2013 at 2:19:21 PM permalink
Quote: s2dbaker

I like that one of the choices is Jesus. I was going to choose that one because it's the funniest.

Imagine if the all powerful but benevolent Jesus came back to Earth and decided that all of humanity should be wiped out,
"I AM THE JESUS AND I HATE HUMANS THEREFOR YOU MUST ALL DIE!!"



Umm this actually happened in the Bible a few times except, according to the book, it was God.
Some people need to reimagine their thinking.
GH
GH
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January 11th, 2013 at 2:27:22 PM permalink
Quote: 98Clubs

Umm this actually happened in the Bible a few times except, according to the book, it was God.


God, Jesus & Holy Spook are the same being. It's what makes Christianity monotheistic.
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