Do not forget that there were several extinction level events here on earth, spanning millions of years.

So it is not the case that it took so long for us to "evolve". It was just a case of luck that nature wiped out the last owners for us. Who is to say how the original higher life forms on earth would have evolved had they not been wiped out so many millions of years ago.

Of course, we do not know if it is true or not, but "they" think that life started very quickly after the conditions of the planet were conducive. I expect the same is true on any planet.

I call bullshit. (not to you personally, but the idea)
Money is NOT the issue. It has nothing at all to do with the problem.

The problem, my dear fellows, is accountability. Mainly the fact that the US in a general sense, has none. There are zero consequences for these guys when they break the law. In fact, there is only incentive for them to do it.

The answer? Simple.
Public service should be considered public service, regardless whether you "join" the military or attempt to "join" the congress. What happens in the military if you do something which is intentionally against the interest of your country? Best case, you are kicked out with a dishonorable discharge. Worst case, you're shot in the head.

Why should congress be different? They are in much more of a position to harm the entire country than a soldier. Yet, they do not swear allegiance. They are not required to live by any code? Why?
Why are these ass hats allowed to literally destroy America and yet nothing happens.

They should be made to live according to the UCMJ. When they fuck up, they are out. When the fuck up on purpose for money are power, they are shot.

I don't think it is any of those things.

I think it is much more basic than that.
What do police do all day long? They drive around watching people and waiting for you to make a mistake. To break a rule. Then they pounce. Sometimes with the force of a 1000 suns.
I believe this has the effect of creating a "us vs them" mentality both with the police and the general population. Once the police are able to view the general population as their enemy / prey, it is second nature to do things against their interest.

It is just like with politics. People are part of a political "team" and they need to beat the other team. It doesn't matter that it is actually against your self interest because there is no need to think about it. There is only the need to win.

I was going to mod you up, but I can see others have taken care of that for me.

I say more or less what you have just written to people all the time and I would encourage others to do the same. Just look at all the nonsense which is posted on FB for example. I try to explain to these people that it makes no difference at all who is elected. They are all the same person. It is only a question of which industry group is pulling the strings.
The USA and NOT a democracy. It has be proven scientifically. Look to the recent paper published by Princeton. http://www.princeton.edu/~mgil...

Look to history people. It is a very rare thing indeed for an entrenched ruling class to be tossed out without blood in the street. The worst part is, the ones fighting you back are your brothers and neighbors who the ruling class have tricked into dieing to keep them in power, even though it is clearly not in their long term interest.

I have no idea what the real solution is, but I hope someone smarter than me can come up with something.

Does this mean that we will need to find some other means of energy rather than burning dead dinosaurs? God forbid.

While this may impact the future economic situation to some degree and CA, it is not like the oil had been extracted and then taken away. The money was never there, it was only the assumption of future money.
I would also point out that the vast majority CA residents are strongly opposed to shale extraction off the coast of CA.

Are you suggesting that it is somehow OK for us to put money into our system for our entire life, while someone who has never worked a day in Germany can come here, collect money for them and their family to live on?
How is that sustainable??
Why on earth should that be allowed? I cannot go to Romania to collect social care.
The fact is, protecting Germany's economy and addressing the needs of poor Rumanians and Bulgarians, are two good intentions in conflict. Why should we always be the ones who do the heavy lifting? What, because of the war? Because of something our grandfathers did we need to pay for every poor country in Europe?

I would think that atomic level manipulation of base materials would be far more efficient than simply trying to convert energy into the desired state of matter.

Look, I am all for human rights and freedom of moment. But what Brussels is trying to force member states into accepting is simply insane.
Here in Germany, we enjoy some of the best social services in the EU. We also enjoy a low unemployment rate coupled with a rather high taxation rate. This is the reason we can afford our current social system.
What the asshats in Brussels are insisting that we do is allow Romanians to migrate to Germany (or the UK) with any job, any prospect of ever getting a job and immediately have access to our social system.
This means that the money they would get just from moving here would far exceed what ever they could have possibly gotten in Romanian and also any remedial job here in Germany.
Our system cannot afford this! We cannot afford to take care of every poor country out there! I wish we could, but we cannot. Our population is aging quickly and we do need immigration, but we need immigration that can contribute to the system rather than suck money out.
I here pundits claiming this will not happen, but it is bullshit. It will happen and it is happening already.
The ONLY way that free movement can work is when EVERY SINGLE EU member state is forced to have the same level of social services for all EU members.

Who's Going To Invent a New One? That's the rub.

I have to wonder. If the Americans came out today with a super-duper new internet, would the rest of the world use it? I do not think so. More and more companies and governments are trying to get their data out of the US for obvious reasons. Many years ago Europeans trusted American tech by default, but now the reverse it true.
Before you flame, I am not saying they do not use it, I am saying they do not trust it. And, they shouldn't. Just as the US does not trust Chinese tech.

I would be the first to agree... Thunderbolt is technically better than USB3.
However, that is not the point.

What is the advantage of USB? Simple. The connector.
I can plug a USB1 device into any USB3 port and it works. The reverse it also true, albeit at a pretty slow transfer rate.

The point it, the USB plug is ubiquitous while thunderbolt is already planning to change the connector again. That means buying adapters.
That also means that the next motherboard I buy most likely wont have thunderbolt on it. Which means I would not be buying any thunderbolt devices.

My impression is that thunderbolt is marketed specifically toward "Apple" people. Since I am not an apple person, I cannot say if this next part is true or not, but the impression that non-apple folks have is that "Apple" people will replace their gadgets every year or two with what ever new thing Apple has come out with.
If that is true, the connector thing is no big deal since you would be starting over every time.

I think that you have not understood.

Google is not directly influencing in the scenario I laid out as you would see from a newspaper article or so.
What Google could do is far more influential.
What do you when you want to learn about something? Chances are, like most folks, you do a Google search and read the related articles, right? Of course you do. How else would you find it?
Let's say you are climate change denier and you want to find articles which reinforce your view or to persuade others to think like you. What if when you searched for terms like "climate change is bullshit" or "climate change hoax" on Google, the only returns were from articles where former climate deniers admitted they were wrong and said climate change is real. Plus article after article explaining how your babies will die because of climate change.

That is real influence. Controlling the information that people can access. There is nothing more powerful than that.

It is a simple fact that they had a mind to, they could drastically impact the elections.

Nearly 90% of the people out there use Google to search for information about everything from the political to lolcatz.
All they would need to do is omit some results from the search and place others high in the list. They can even insert propaganda into seemingly unrelated searches.
Something perhaps designed to manufacture rage at one particular party or candidate.

Controlling all information to have complete power.

Imagine if google and bing decided that a certain candidate didn't exist and the name only returned some unrelated items. No news article links, no info sites, nothing.

That is all well and good in western countries, there is however a down side to the increased price of beef.
For example, the massive deforestation of Brazil due to illegal cattle farming which is sold to the West at a very tidy profit. If you double the price of beef there would be loads more people trying to illegally farm.
Not to say there is anything wrong with making a living, but unregulated cattle farms play hell with the local ecology.

and also....first post.

It is NOT climate change anymore. It is called climate disruption.

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