The NYT Imagines Life After Earth 271
An anonymous reader writes to mention a New York Times article entitled Life After Earth. The article looks at 'bio-vaults,' be they in the frozen north or on the moon, which might allow the human race to continue on after a globally catastrophic event. From the article: "The trouble with doomsday, Dr. Shapiro argues, is that it is almost always rendered in popular culture as grandiose, though in reality, many minor incidents present substantial everyday threats. In 1918, an influenza strain killed some 30 million people; a possible new bird flu strain spurs contemporary panic. In January 2003, a computer virus shut down airlines, banks and governments. That same year, a tree fell on power lines outside Cleveland, resulting in a blackout for much of the Northeast. Doomsday can be understated."
My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
They say "CO2 will kill us all" and I say the market may provide us a better life because of a r
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Erm, yeah.. If global warming were the only conceivable doomsdayscenario..
Nuclear weaponry isn't quite enhancing my life, nor are worldwide influenza pandemics, direct meteor hits, global overexposure to radiation as a result of a freakishly excessive sunspot or near-by exploding supernova, or even, in fact, global alien invasion bent on genocide.
As for wanting to live in a bubble city; no-one's stopping you. You can just move into the basement and hook up the airco. I for one like having some forrest on hand to walk about in, with fresh air too.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's the problem with relying on force to try to keep those trees -- we just don't know what is out there that would provide for your tree-love. I also love trees, in fact I own a few acres of property that is currently heavily forested. I love visiting it (there is NOTHING nearby).
Why wouldn't a bubble-city have more trees that we currently do? Who is to say that some inventor won't come up with an interesting way to divert CO2 emissions from factories within the bubble city straight into the ground so the trees can use it to create oxygen for the city? We just don't know. We didn't know about plasma TVs a few decades ago, but that invention will greatly cut down on the garbage created from large CRT TVs that get thrown into the dumps (and plasma TVs far outlive the life-span of a CRT). Thank the market for that "pro-environment" creation, and we'll thank the market when they find cleaner ways to create those plasmas or flat panels. Remember, every ounce of waste that is created by industry is WASTE -- it means something goes into the mix that is a loss for the company. Companies would likely try to find ways to cut that waste or find productive uses for it rather than tossing it.
I'm not sure that the future will look anything like what our lives look like today. I know that my life is significantly better than that of my ancestors, who had to deal with smelly and polluted cities. It wasn't government that cut pollutions, it was industries striving to reduce waste and increase efficiency that did it. I was in communist Russia before the USSR fell, and I was in the DDR before the wall fell, and those "heavily regulated" societies stank and were incredibly dirty.
All I know is that mankind has always found ways to better themselves, and it is always an individual that does it because of the desire to increase their own wealth. I don't see why we wouldn't at least give a consideration to the future from a market perspective rather than just give the doom-and-gloom people the only opinion. They've been wrong each and every time before it seems.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Untrue, or at least highly selective. Much (most?) pollution is not a consequence of inefficiency, and industry has no inherent incentive to reduce it. This is the standard example given to illustrate negative externalities [wikipedia.org].
Government is the only instrument I'm aware of by which people can push these externalized costs back onto the polluters. And claiming that it hasn't done so is flat wrong. All the way back to Edward I in 1361 banning the burning of sea-coal to reduce London smog.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
It wasn't government that cut pollutions
I beg to differ. Look at the US. Limits are set re: maximum production, based upon size, production, etc., but in the form of how much can be generated. The big companies then purchase the unused chits from the smaller companies as there are many small companies which aren't consuming their quota and it's extra income.
Now, who is permitting that to occur? It's not Grandma Rose living down the street.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:3, Funny)
Egads, you're right. Upon investigation [epa.gov] it appears that Edward I was indeed the correct Edward, but that the date in question should have been 1272. I shall amend the offending article [wikipedia.org] forthwith.
--
The price of Wikipedia is eternal vigilance
Most. Apposite. Sig. Ever.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
Know anyone who has benefitted from radiation cancer treatment? Or do you like the power that comes out of your wall socket (varies % nuke generated by location)?
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
Chemotherapy? Nuclear power plants? If it wasn't for the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents, we would have been working on kicking our oil addiction DECADES ago.
nor are worldwide influenza pandemics
Which have also caused a great deal of improvement in the distribution information and a rise in education. China practically went into a state of quarantine when SARS broke out and is now (relatively) under control. Compared to just a century ago, the 1918
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
> Chemotherapy? Nuclear power plants?
ERROR: Message not received. Repeat transmission in bold caps and emphasis to increase likelyhood of uptake.
NUCLEAR WEAPONRY ISN'T QUITE ENHANCING MY LIFE
End transmission.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
Really? Try thinking about that again the next time you flick on a light switch. Nuclear energy, which has been developed thanks in no small part due to nuclear weaponry. As oil shortages continue and prices go up we will soon find the world becoming more reliant on nuclear energy than ever before.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
And who is trying to develop solutions to those problems, the state or individuals? In fact, isn't some of those problems caused by the state? I haven't seen many individuals building nukes, and if someone needed a nuke, it would be to
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
Actually, it would be more environmental friendly if we removed your brain and put it in a jar and then simulated your experience of breathing clean air and walking in that forest.
Not that you would be any wiser when we did this... But I doubt you'd notice the fact we moved your body a bunker in venus or an
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand when in 60-80s US public was affraid of the communists as some boogeymen. But now?
Oh wait, they scare children with terrorists now.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
Terrorists make for a scary bedtime story because terrorists are actually pretty scary. Likewise communists (not so much anymore, though, thanks in part to non-communist states' using them as diplomatic leverage. Which was my point. Did you have one?).
Communist != Soviet (Score:3, Insightful)
So two rival superpowers armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons aren't dangerous unless one of them has a communist economy? How do you figure? I'd imagine that it would have more to do with the political and military realities of the two nations.
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2, Funny)
Ahhhh, but what about Dr. Frink's death ray?
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
You're giving us a lot of credit (Score:4, Interesting)
We've seen science fiction talk about living in bubble/dome cities, but why would this be bad? Can you imagine what life would be like if we did have better control over our local environments? Would a bubbled city offer a better life for millions in the upper north, people who deal with more winter than summer? Would we see better air scrubbers providing better air? Would we see better control over irrigation and drought?
I confess that I'm not 100% sure I understand what the overall point of your post was, so forgive me if I'm taking something out of context. But this was the one paragraph that I did understand enough to reply to.
You're giving human beings a hell of a lot of credit by assuming that we would be able to construct an environment that is "better" than what nature has provided. There's so tremendously many variables and effects that would need to be considered, I have to believe that anything we would come up with -- however impressive it might appear at first glance -- would eventually be found to be seriously lacking. Maybe it would be something as simple as out domed cities not getting enough water now that we can't rely on rainfall. It could be something as insidious as accidently leaving out some species of animal, insect, or plant in our little bio-dome that turns out to be really damn important. I wouldn't want to trust our future to our ability to engineer an environment.
Who knows. I know that I trust that out of the billions of humans today we'll find a few who can find the utility and invention needed to create tomorrow's world. I don't like to think of us living in vaults because that "invention" is based on yesterday's technology. Yesterday's technology came out of need created by the time before yesterday. Tomorrow's technology will come out of need we face today. Don't sell the future short, especially considering how far we've come in the past 1000 years, 200 years, 100 years, 50 years and 10 years. Humanity is not going to go away, it will just find ways to make life better no matter what seems to happen to the world around us.
I think the point (I didn't RTFA due to the registration) is probably that a doomsday catastrophe would cause such a rapid shift in the world that humanity wouldn't be able to adapt in time. Even if I were to agree with your concept that "given enough time, humans will think their way out of any maze" -- which I'm not sure I do -- the timescales of these things need to be considered. A serious reduction in available food supplies would hit the poor first. Since it's largely the rich who are in positions to make policy changes, by the time the problem started affecting them enough to take action, it might be too late for all of us.
Again, if I'm misunderstanding your post, please accept my apology. But it sounds like you have an awfully optimistic view of the capabilities of humans to adapt.
GMD
Re:You're giving us a lot of credit (Score:2)
Go back before even biblical times and we see stories (and find proof even) that humans found ways to overcome crises that might have wiped us out. People will die -- rich and poor -- but the next generatio
Re:You're giving us a lot of credit (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, often times that solution is just waiting the disaster out, hoping to be one of the lucky survivors, and then replacing the drastic drop in population with a new generation after the smoke has cl
Re:You're giving us a lot of credit (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true. It's theorized that at one point several million years ago, humanity was reduced to no more than a thousand or so individuals who then went on to repopulate the planet(explaining our surprising lack of genetic variation).
Seriously though, what's people's weirdo fetsh with the "EN
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
I remember a bubble city in Total Recall... how'd that work out for them?
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My take on Doomsday from a market perspective (Score:2)
How about bad in the way the June '6 issue of Discover (Are We Trapped On Earth: Why Cosmic Rays Could Prevent Us From Leaving ?
They cover a lot of cosmic issues in that article.
Few civ-science materials provide why a craft has to be bigger than Pamella Anderson's breasts to get there (Mars). My solution has always been launching multiple oassis types of craft which would be available to make a swap of resources along the way.
The primary issue which Discover (et al) has [covered in the [past] is wha
I for one (Score:2, Funny)
Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a good effort should be made to avoid disaster in the first place. Tracking asteroids, studying diseases, and just getting along so we don't nuke ourselves would be a good start.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity, is anybody PAYING you to spam that stupid link in inane comments like this, or do you just not have anything better to do with your time?
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:2)
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:5, Informative)
Faith Based Initiative - Transformation from Secular to Religious Government [theocracywatch.org]
On February 4, 2004, the U.S. House of Representatives voted for provisions in a social services bill that allow religiously based job discrimination in publicly funded programs run by churches.
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:2)
After seeing how the Government works (Katrina?), and experiencing how the Salvation Army works, I'd trust the Salvation Army with my money far more than I would trust the Government.
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush gives government funding to churches because he's a hardcore christian.
Bush denies government funding for stem cell research because he's a hardcore christian.
nice definition of independent you've got there. go ask him yourself - it's not like he's afraid of admitting he's acting on his religious beliefs.
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:2)
Had to look this one up - "Plague of Justinian"? Do you have any good sources that show it to be an impetus for the Dark Ages?
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:2)
Sort of.
People were getting sick and those who attended to them -- the equivalent of today's physicians, got sick and croaked. The next group, taking mercy on the sick (nuns and priests) became sick and croaked. The Pope then proclaimed a pilgrimage for a massive trip to show God their unity & support. Boom!. Congregate everyone and|or healthy in one spot. 90% of those who started the journey didn't make it home.
Eventually, those who were still alive realized where the rats were, people got si
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:2)
Re:Let's try to avoid a catastrophe too. (Score:2)
Doesn't work that way.
You know how if you bury any length of network cable, a backhoe will eventually show up? So if you're ever lost in the forest, just bury some fiber, and ask the backhoe driver for directions.
Well, trees and power lines work the same way. Just string a power line above the ground, and a tree will come along and drop a branch through it.
You've probably not heard of
Instead, I imagine.... (Score:5, Funny)
Like... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, yeah. Doomsday is a relatively trivial exercise.
Eat, drink. Be merry.
Re:Like... (Score:3, Insightful)
A blackout in Cleveland is an inconvenience. A few people might die, but in the big picture survial-of-the-species it's not even a blip. Actually, it's probably good for people to be reminded that electricity isn't necessarily always available.
Computer viruses, ditto. If you die because of a computer virus you've done something VERY wrong.
As for real viruses, whether it's bird flu, 1918 f
Wow. Thats big. (Score:2)
I did a quick Google search but I can't find anything even close. Do you have a source?
Re:Like... (Score:2)
Of course not! (Score:5, Funny)
Of course not! He killed Superman!
The trouble with doomsday predictions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The trouble with doomsday predictions (Score:2)
Don't forget the age-old question about who will be around to take advantage of the seed vaults and stuff, too. If no humans are alive, no amount of DNA stored in a vault is going to bring the human race back unless there is an automated mechanism for doing so built into the vault. The vault would also have to be smart enough to detect every possible reason for delaying deployment---radiation levels, harmful bacteria and viruses, aliens standing around with pulse weapons, etc. If it can do that, with the
Hollow Men (Score:5, Insightful)
Not with a bang, but a whimper."
-TS Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925
Fire and Ice (Score:2)
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
- Robert Frost
First came the trolls, then locusts, then frogs... (Score:2)
Little did I know that those words in that seemingly ordinary Slashdot article would bring about the end in seven months' time.
Life after earth will be much like before... (Score:2, Funny)
"I'd be with stupid, but he was drowned in the global catastrophe of 2020."
"My parents visited the cities of the great plague, but all I got was this shitty fatal infection."
My favorite part... (Score:5, Insightful)
Survivor 1: "Wow, that asteroid destroyed 95% of life here on Earth, but now that the dust has settled we can open the genetic vault and start anew! Now just where did we stick those samples?"
Survivor 2: "Uh, on the moon I think."
Survivor 1: "Oh, how convenient." [cries]
Re:My favorite part... (Score:4, Funny)
Smells like a reasonable plan to me.
Re:My favorite part... (Score:2)
That's what they tell you to persuade you not to give up going to work and absconding to some remote area as soon as the first signs of epidemic show up. Seriously: a normal flu can kill a lot more than this. According to CDC figures [cdc.gov], there are 36,000 deaths from flu per annum on average. An epidemic ought to double these figures, at least.
Re:My favorite part... (Score:2)
AKAIK There have been
- no
US casualties from Avian Flu to date.Re:My favorite part... (Score:2)
Doomsday already happened on the moon (Score:2)
If you have to shield from meteor impact and radiation, that should take care of two of the disasters mentioned in the article (meteor impact and nuclear war).
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
I've gotcher life after earth right here! (Score:2)
Don't worry, we'll get to keep our slug-throwers, even centuries after we leave earth. In fact, aside from the spaceships and hovercars [wikipedia.org], it'll seem a lot like the Wild West.
Obligatory Dr. Strangelove Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
Oblig. Simp. (Score:2)
DOOMSDAY WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (Score:2)
Here's a reason not to be too frightened... (Score:2, Interesting)
Doomsday understated? (Score:2, Insightful)
By its nature doomsday isn't understated. Look it up on m-w.com. judgement day. Catastophic destruction
Unpredictable (Score:2)
Yes, we can take care of scenarios like - a huge asteriod hitting earth or a doomsday bomb or so on and so forth, by having bio-freezers in earth or moon or something.
But what about other scenarios, for example a magnetar spewing out gamma-rays in all its glory.
You can be anywhere in the solar system and you will be fried in a minute or 2.
Or due to some natural/un-natural process, a virus/bacteria gets created which splits water to its elemental components..
Even if that species did
Our ancestors: Been there, Done that (Score:2)
Happens about every million [mit.edu] years
That would be the ancestor of algae [wikipedia.org]. Wiped out almost everything [astrobio.net] back in the day, but led to green plants and us.
Those magnatar [nasa.gov]
Great Idea Contained Here: (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF (Score:3, Interesting)
NY Times Doomsday (Score:4, Insightful)
Women and minorities hardest hit.
Re:NY Times Doomsday (Score:2)
They may be the hardest hit, but they won't need us (men) for long. [slashdot.org]
_____________________________
Those who don't read
The Strangelove Scenario (Score:2)
Underground vaults...ten women to every man [ccmep.org]. Where do I sign up?
bird flu causing panic? (Score:2)
a possible new bird flu strain spurs contemporary panic
Only because the media keeps telling us we should be worried. Personally, I'm not worrying, and neither is anybody that I know in meatspace.
Same old, same old. [blogspot.com]
Remember SARS? (Score:2)
Personally, I'm not worrying, and neither is anybody that I know in meatspace.
The people wearing masks around major Chinese cities a few years back were almost a direct throwback to the 1918 flu panic -- in which entire populations put on porous, ineffectual masks in order to protect against a pathogen much too small to be hindered by the fabric. There are pictures of streets in Philadelphia on which everyone, everyone, is wearing a mask. Whole towns closed their gates; "Keep on driving, we don't want vi
Sheez-- get a library card and read some SciFi (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget the Times. Instead, go read Azimov, Niven, Heinlein, or a thousand others that did a better job. Maybe the NYT is getting closer to using that odd "World War III" phrase that the orthodox Christians are trying to sell.
Ok, I'm likely to get modded as a troll. Please consider before you do that: somebody actually paid good money to put this into print in the Times, and Sci Fi authors at best, got about a nickel a word.
Well (Score:2)
Consider what another century or two of progress could bring. Allow for the idea that we can duplicate what happens in every one of our 6 billion skulls with electronic circuitry at least 10 million times faster. This is why AI or some other form of enhanced intelligence is so powerful...if we could replicate the processes going on in the heads of the brightest among us
Re:Well (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:2)
Consider what another century or two of progress could bring. Allow for the idea that we can duplicate what happens in every one of our 6 billion skulls with electronic circuitry at least 10 million times faster. This is why AI or some other form of enhanced intelligence is so powerful...if we could replicate the processes going on in the heads of the brightest among us, b
Time vaults (Score:2)
Oh come on! (Score:2)
And this year, a car ran over a cat.
Since when does "doomsday" mean "mild inconvenience"? Don't you need, like, at least one dead person before you can start putting it on the List of Things That Will Destroy the Earth?
Oxy Moron (Score:5, Insightful)
No it can't.
None of those things listed are even close to Doomsday. They're barely even little blips on the radar screen of history. Out of 6 billion people, the computer virus and the blackout killed how many? These things were moderate inconveniences for thousands, not inescapable death for billions.
Even the flu killed 30 million out of almost 2,000 million, or 1.5%. Yeah, sucks to be them, but killing 1.5% of the population didn't exactly move homo sapiens to the endangered species list.
A modern super-bug could be terrible. No one knows if the worst case scenario is the death of millions or into the billions, but I bet you'll have a hard time finding biologists who think a bug could show up that kills ALL humans. It not only would have to spread like mad, have a long incubation period, be untreatable, and not have any people with any natural immunity, it would also have to be able to get through gas-masks and biohazard suits, infiltrate our best air filters, cross oceans to desert islands people had isolated themselves on (and shoot anyone who tries to get near). And with all that going on, I wouldn't call in understated anymore.
The real Doomsday fears list is pretty short- Nuclear War, Meteor, other improbable astronomical events like supernova. Global warming is NOT a doomsday scenario. It might be a "things are really going to suck" scenario, and I'm not saying we shouldn't be trying to stop it, but it's not going to KILL everybody, it just might make it unbearably hot, ruin crops, cause flooding, worsen natural disasters, etc. But Earth's spent many millions of years being hotter than our global warming forecasts, and life goes on. The real doomsday scenarios ARE NOT understated things that creep up on us- pretty much by definition, little gradual changes are things we adapt too, anticipate, measure, study, and, if they're really getting serous, do something about before we all die. We aren't going to suddenly switch from a negative feedback cycle to an unstoppable positive feedback cycle that destroys everything. If that were in the cards, it would have happened in the past 5 billion years. Our systems (biological and social) are much more robust and stable than that. Realistic doomsday scenarios are big, colossal, horrific events that are anything but understated.
With a Whimper (Score:2)
After the NY Times spent years pimping every Bush "immediate threat", like Iraq, moving papers and policy on their fearmongering, they finally start to tell people that "it's not the end of the world". Except now they're downplaying the real risks, like climate catastrophes, refugee disasters, Constitutional crises.
It's impossible to get info exactly right in life, so there's a tightwalk between paranoia and denial. The NY Times pulls off the
Doomsday shmoomsday... (Score:2)
Unsustainable Societies (Score:5, Interesting)
It occurred to me the other day just how fragile our lifestyle is. Take, for example, the 2003 blackout mentioned in the blurb. That blackout lasted about two days where I lived and longer in some of the outlying suburbs. Just in those two days, I personally lost food in my fridge/freezer, got an XP (no SPs) laptop infected with a virus while trying to access the internet without my Linux firewall using a UPS to power the DSL modem, and had neighbors "wilding" in the nearby city neiborhoods since they didn't have to work the next day. On a larger scale, my neighborhood grocer lost a lot of their stock and prices went up to account for the loss (and oddly never went back down again), my employer lost a few Cisco routers due to unstable power when the power did come back online in spite of the UPS systems, and I'm certain there were people who had far more serious problems due to the blackout. Just two days and everything was starting to go to hell in hours.
Then I thought about this... for those of you who use less reliable OSes like Windows, do you remember how much of a pain it was to restore back to the EXACT state you were in before a hard drive crash? It's nearly impossible pre-Windows NT. You can get real close, but you're never back to exactly where you were before. Things that you've built up over time and come to rely on but also taken for granted are gone or don't work right. Or if they were downloads, then you might wind up having to use a newer version that loses functionality compared to the older one which you no longer have. Now apply that to a city. A state. An entire country. The way our societies are built are unsustainable. We are on very shaky ground and there is damn little we can do about it.
Also consider the "little things" that aren't so little when they regard you personally. Take breast implants. They require periodic checkups to make sure everything is going just right (ie. you're not about to be killed or made deathly ill byt them). If you happen to be coming up on a checkup and the hospitals are full of bomb blast victims, do you think anyone is going to see you anytime soon to check them out? Not likely. At least not until it's life threatening. That's no way to live.
I propose that people should try to find ways to live that can be easily carried on after most disasters (barring complete catastrophies or nuclear holocusts). For example, hydroponic gardens that are operated by wind up mechanisms with cisterns to collect rain water for the irrigation of the gardens. Or, alternative modes of mass transportation that don't rely on centralized power sources or centrally distributed fuels. Pretty much all of these systems should be self contained and rely on nature. Solar, wind, hydro, bio power sources are all essential.
At the very least, know how to get yourself out of a sticky situation using bleach, aluminum foil, paper towels or napkins, baking soda, a simple container and lots of copper wire... Those of you who know what I'm talking about will smile.
Re:Unsustainable Societies (Score:3, Funny)
This is Slashdot. All the breasts here are created through natural processes, fueled by Cheetos and Mountain Dew.
Oh Please! (Score:2)
Even if the global economy collapsed due to some mass power outage, life would go on. It's incredibly shortsighted to compare such things to "The End Of The World(tm)". Get some perspective.
Slow news day? (Score:2)
No one else has mentioned it yet, so.... (Score:2)
http://qntm.org/destroy [qntm.org]
Always good for some yuks!
Re:This is what I like to see! (Score:2, Funny)
Good news everyone! We've gotta catapult our precious bodily fluids to the moo
Re:This is what I like to see! (Score:2)
"We've gotta catapult [retroweb.com] our precious bodily fluids to the moon."
Well, you had 'moon' too, but I'm not going to be too anal about it.
Re:Titan A.E. (Score:2)
I refuse to live on a planet named 'Bob'!
Though I'm betting The Church of the Subgenious would be thrilled.
Re:Oh noes (Score:2)
Our modern way of life has been designed around a system of power, clean water, transportation and an accessible infrastructure. If any one of these items breaks down completely it could be catastrophic. It may not mean the end of the world, but the num
Re:My favorite (Score:2)
Re:My favorite (Score:2)
Nitpick: Collapsing Stars and Black Holes (Score:2)
Just a nitpick, but that's not how collapsing stars work. For one, our sun is too small to form a black hole upon it's death. For that to happen, a star must first collapse to a white dwarf, which then fades out to a brown dwarf, as fusion brings the elementary make-up of the star toward iron. Then, the mass of the star must still be great enough to overcome the fact that iron (and heavier elements) don't fuse, at least not in the normal se
Re:Why preserve humanity? (Score:2)
No. It's the preservation of the species drive that's built into just about every life form. The difference is that we might be the only species that thinks about it. (Hitchhiker's Guide jokes notwithstanding).
Re:a globally catastrophic event (Score:4, Funny)
2nd time George Bush was elected was relatively harmless.
It's this third time around where things have really gone in the crapper.
I sure hope they don't come up with a GB for the next election.
Re:Our colossal arrogance.. (Score:2)
A masive disaster may be just what we need...
This is some odd, mutant cousin of Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome, isn't it?