There are several problems which have caused what you refer to as childish comments.

1) Gates is involved. Gates is a proven corporate rogue who, while a significant section of the World's population admire him (generally those more ignorant of his history, some even thinking he invented computers), he only generates dislike and cynicism among those concerned about his history of cheating and extortion. They see his "green" and "humanitarian" activities merely as an attempt to repair his bad reputation.

2) Technology for recycling sewerage has existed for years. Gates is posing as if he were involved in a new inverntion.

3) There are some simple low-tech solutions to these problems. Water shortages tend to occur where settlements have sprung up in areas in past times where water was adequate (they would not have been settled otherwise) but it has since ceased to be, or because a past irrigation/water supply system has broken down through neglect.. A better solution might be for the people to give it up and move to a location nearer a river from which water can easily be piped (using wind pumps) and filtered much more easily than sewerage can. In fact they may already be near enough.

Plastic piping is really quite cheap, wind pumps are low-tech, and the rivers of the world currently dump vast quantities of fresh water into the sea every day. I understand that there are stacks of plastic pipes in some African villages, put there by humanitarians for making water supplies, that no-one has actually bothered to assemble. What is needed is some organisation and effort, perhaps by the villagers themselves. So what chance of maintaining Gates' apparatus?

I am probably one of those you consider unintelligent, childish etc as I have made some critical comments earlier, but keep it going because I feel very secure against that. Just to make sure here it is again :- :

Gates talks shit, sells shit, and is a shit.

Ask the those bottled water companies that sell the stuff labelled as such.

It would not suprise me.

"Dovetailing" his name into this turns me straight off the idea. Here is one of the biggest corporate rogues the World has ever seen trying to rescue his massive negative karma by thowing money (of which he has so much that he could not possibly spend directly on himself) at what he thinks are do-good projects. Actually, there is nothing new about processing sewerage enough to make it drinkable.

He should be giving a proportion of his money back to the people he has cheated first. Then he can do what he likes with the rest.

Please explain why you really need to. Let me guess : to attend a conference on organising conferences? A conference on designing aircraft for taking people to conferences on designing aircraft? A conference on marketing holiday flights?

In my work I see others who make careers out of travelling to meetings all over the place, then writing reports on the meetings they had. No-one ever reads the reports. It is all bullshit.

So it's strange that most wars have been between people and nations that have known each other only too well. The medieval wars between England and France, such as the Hundred Years War, were basically family disputes. Until about 1400 the English kings and their courts were culturally French, considered themselves French, and even spoke French - but they still fought the French. The foot soldiers of course didn't give a shit and were there for the plunder - nothing has changed there then.

Then there are civil wars, more common and vicious than international ones, between people who live together, just as most murders are committed within a family or social circle. Things like 9/11 are the result of the global export of what were once localised fueds.

OTOH, Europeans never fought American Indians until, well, early globalisation. It is a common fallacy to assume that people who know each other must get to love each other.

He mentioned "train car bus". You picked cars, which are the worst for efficiency, but only slightly worse than aircraft. Trains and buses are far better.

As for aircraft carrying freight, that is so inefficient that it is only used for premium freight, such as mail and high value stuff.

All the time "we" have been around (unless you or me are >70 yo) there have been phones. And back when there were not, hospitals were localised enough for one to have sent a runner or despatched a telegram for hand delivery to where you lived if things were life threatening. They did that sort of thing in those days.

Stop feeling guilty about the First World. Nothing to stop a runner being sent in the Third World (who largely have cell phones these days anyway).

Is his name Lenny?

It's Lenny

I run Linux but very often have Windows XP running in a VM for one reason or another. I would love one of these guys to phone me so I can fuck him around with my VM, but they never do. How does one get onto their list?

That's enough complaints for anybody.

No it is not ridiculous. I regard my country as my home, albeit shared with the other people legally in it. As for "tearing apart families", it is immigration that does that because it is not generally whole families that migrate; it tends to be the men who migrate. The immigrants I know spend a lot of time (and CO2 emissions) travelling back and forth to their country of origin to see their families (and no, those families do not necessarily want to leave where they are).

As for you taking in girls and "sponsoring" immigrants, you clearly have an agenda. I am not sure what you are trying to prove, or is it just to wind people up? Or is it to knock the Naxi culture out of them by westernising them? Are you not yourself involved in "tearing" them from their families? Ironic that you give the Naxi link, it shows an admirable culture; don't you feel guilty about having a part in destroying it?

You think that maintaining Mexico would be cheaper than maintaining a fence? I'd change tablets if I were you.

It depends who is doing the calculation. If you are the boss of a cheap clothes factory I expect your calc will come down very favourably for illegal immigrants - favourable to your own pocket anyway which is where most people's calcs stop. OTOH if you are an out of work "native" it will come out unfavourably.

But it is not just money. Also needing to be taken into account are social factors such as the fragmentation of society, sex ratio balance, divided loyalties, the import of other countries' fueds and the attitudes of people who feel they have nothing to lose whatever they do.

The "Nazi scientists" were actually looking for differences between Aryans on the one hand and Jews and Slavs on the other. Africans, which is where this discussion started, were not even on the horizon as far as they (and most white people at the time) were concerned