It is feasible with current technology to supply all the energy needs of a modern house in Upstate NY—hardly one of the "sunniest places worldwide"—with solar panels on the roof of the house. I know this, because I personally know people doing it. Granted, they're currently using the grid as a "battery," rather than actually doing local energy storage, but when averaged over a year, they are net producers of energy.

If this can be done in Upstate NY—just a few hours' drive from the Canadian border—then I posit that it can be done in the vast majority of the inhabited world. That's not to say that I think we should rely solely on solar power for the entire world's energy generation needs—wind, hydro, and some other renewables should be in the mix, as well—but it does mean that any suggestion that solar is only feasible in the "sunniest places worldwide" needs to present some kind of very compelling evidence that what I'm seeing here is a fluke.

Dan Aris

The single greatest predictor of this, as I understand it, is education level of the mother. So yes, if we manage to raise the standard of living in the rest of the world to something comparable to what we enjoy in what we term "the developed world" today, there is a very high probability that the average worldwide birthrate will also look very much like the birthrate in the current developed world.

But, in all fairness, that doesn't solve the problem in any immediate sense. It just means that we won't be increasingly overpopulating our planet in the future.

Dan Aris

Right, so that's, what, about 1/2 the world's population you just listed? (Off the top of my head.) And with the largest country in the world and the most populated country in the world either "getting there" or "not so much getting there."

"Every country in the world" includes all of Africa, the war-torn Middle East, India (which is, I would say, also "getting there," but certainly not there yet), South America, Southeast Asia...

Sure, there are parts of all these places that have very good standards of living. But there are also very large number of people living in them whose standard of living is no better than a subsistence farmer from Western Europe in the Dark Ages.

(And on a side note, if I were looking to state that everyone should have a high standard of living, I'd pick Western Europe over America. Health care and leisure time are not, in my book, optional extras or luxuries that only the very rich should be able to afford, and the prevailing mood in America seems to disagree with me on that.)

Dan Aris

I think the idea that by 2035, we should expect every country in the world to have a comparable standard of living to America today is nothing short of laughable. So that blows a big hole right through the main premise.

Furthermore, aren't there figures that show that we could supply enough energy to power the entire world with a solar farm of a few (few dozen, few hundred, whatever) square miles in the Sahara, or something like that? Obviously that in itself isn't necessarily a practical solution, but it should demonstrate that the idea that we can't provide enough power to the entire world to match America's level of consumption right now is, at best, a shaky one.

It sounds to me like they picked an arbitrary date when we were somehow supposed to get everyone's standard of living up to America's, without considering what would actually be required to do that (hint: it includes stopping an awful lot of violence that's not likely to stop any time soon). If you are going to assume that we can raise everyone's standard of living like that in the first place, why would you not also assume that we can build out solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources to match?

Dan Aris

Yes, OK, you have successfully identified the exact same problem I was complaining about.

You, however, seem to view it as an axiom—something inherent in the fundamental concept of having a job. I view it as, at best, a necessary evil, and at worst, a method of enabling sociopathic narcissists in obtaining high-paying jobs, while people with strong job skills—and good interpersonal skills—but poor salesmanship skills are left un- or under-employed.

Dan Aris

If you're applying for a sales job, then you need to demonstrate ability to sell stuff.

If you're applying for a programming job, that will never come into contact with customers, why the hell should you need to demonstrate an ability to sell stuff? And yet the job application process is, broadly, the same. Sure, there are some companies that have highly-tailored application and interview processes for programmers (or customer service reps, or salespeople, or whatever other particular job), but far too many just have the entire process run by HR in the exact same way for every single aspect of the business.

Dan Aris

It's not a false dilemma, though I can see how it might appear like one. And way to be gratuitously insulting, mate.

Sure, there are intelligent extraverts. I know a number of them. And there are stupid introverts. I know some of them, too.

But my point was, the job application process is heavily biased in favour of extraverts of all intelligence levels—to the point where, if you're good at BS and interviewing with someone who isn't good at picking up on it, you can easily get them to believe you're the best choice they could ever find for a particular position, despite the fact that you don't have the first clue how to do the job, and have no intention of doing anything other than faking your way through it and collecting a paycheck.

And, on the flip side, I have multiple friends who are introverted (but clearly not on the autism spectrum), and very good at what they do, but who have been having serious trouble finding jobs since the recession because they are, in various ways, uncomfortable with selling themselves.

Dan Aris

College applications, hell; let's throw out the job application process. It's essentially a mechanism to give self-important extraverts with little skill a huge leg up on highly intelligent, diligent introverts who are repulsed by the idea of salesmanship in general, and having to sell oneself in particular.

Unfortunately, as with college applications, I can't easily come up with an alternative that does a better job.

Plus, of course, there's absolutely no way to actually "throw out" either of these processes across the entirety of academia, industry, government, etc. Every private college and for-profit business can do whatever they damn well please in terms of applications, and for many of them, inertia is a way of life.

Dan Aris

Heh, and this is where, as I say, I'm not a physicist, and can't easily check his work to see just how realistic it really is.

As far as that stuff's concerned, I'm content to just read it, and say, "Ooh, pretty explosions!" And not worry about just how much of it is actually realistic.

Dan Aris

Oh, yes, I'm fully aware! I was never much of a student of that period in history, though (nor did I ever read any of the actual Horatio Hornblower books), so I'm afraid only the most hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-brick bits really get through to me. (Mainly the French Revolution expies, since I do know a bit more about that.)

My understanding as to what caused him to not kill off Honor in the Battle of Manticore was that it was ultimately the partnership with (I think) Eric Flint on the Crown of Slaves spinoff sub-series, which then also led to the new Mesan Alignment plot in the main series.

Dan Aris

I'm no physicist myself, but from what I can tell, David Weber's Honor Harrington series of novels does a pretty good job of getting the physics right. Most battles are missile duels, energy weapons are powerful, but short-range, and when they develop a means of giving missiles multi-stage drives, it changes the game significantly, as they no longer have a single burst of maneuvering speed and then come in ballistic; they can accelerate at their target, burn out the first stage, coast in ballistic for many thousands of kilometers, and then activate the second stage for final maneuvering.

The writing is, in my opinion, readable, but not stellar, and he has much too much of a fascination with the French Revolution (to the point that one of the characters is named Rob S. Pierre) and that era in general, but I'm mildly enjoying reading through the ebook versions of the series (after having gotten them out of the library once, then purchased the most recent one, which had a CD with the ebooks of the rest on it, a year or so ago). I do find that I'm skimming large amounts of mostly irrelevant blather this time around, though ;-)

Dan Aris

For some, it's because Apple has the audacity to make tech easy for non-techies to use—that is, take away the exclusivity that some of the geeks here feel they should have on being able to use complex electronic devices.

For others, it's because Apple doesn't open up everything so that they can tinker with the innards and customize it to their exacting specifications (at least without jailbreaking).

In these cases, and some similar ones, there's a strong sense that Apple is not serving true geeks, but rather the masses, and therefore they're never going to do anything different that's not cosmetic—shiny, thin devices, pretty UI, that sort of thing. They must be incapable of real, complex, important stuff, because they don't "get" our favorite complex, important stuff.

For still others, though, it's not really about Apple, but rather a general sense that no large organization—company, government, or government agency—is going to act in the best interests of the people they are supposed to be serving (in one way or another), and that they will almost gleefully lie about their nefarious intentions in order to lull the sheeple into a false sense of security.

And sure, it's possible that Apple's lying. That up until now, they have been open about being willing to give your information to the Feds when they ask for it, but now they'll just do it under the table. But that really doesn't pass Occam's Razor. It doesn't even pass Hanlon's Razor—it requires Apple to be both malicious and stupid. But a lot of people believe Apple is exactly that, because Apple's not Their Team—it's Them, not Us, and therefore any and all negative traits are safe to attribute to it.

Dan Aris

Well, first off, they fall under the FCC's jurisdiction as telecommunications companies of one stripe or another. So there's a certain amount of power to regulate them there.

Second of all, as you so astutely note, giving them federal funds with strings attached means they are sort of required to abide by the terms of those strings, and from what I understand (though I haven't researched this in-depth), they have, in fact, taken government money to do certain things that they have signally failed to do, which means there ought to at least be some sort of penalty until they do. Money might work—say, 10% of their gross income the first year they fail to comply, increasing to 20% the second year, 30% the third, until they either do their damn jobs or simply bleed to death.

Thirdly, there is a strong argument to be made (whether you agree with it or not; I happen to) that internet service is, at this point, no longer a "non-essential luxury product," but a basic service along the lines of telephone and power. As such, it should be regulated much more strictly than it has been to date. Ideally, the company that owns the physical hardware (the lines going to your house, for instance) should either be government-owned, or should at least be forbidden from actually providing any more than the hardware—they should have to lease the lines at one price to all comers in the ISP market, and have no "value-add services" of their own. That would remove the incentive for them to do anything with their money but invest it in better infrastructure.

Dan Aris

At this point, the various big ISPs have taken so much taxpayer money, and provided so little in return, that I'd say we should stop providing them with any subsidies, and still require the same level of buildout. They can take the balance out of their execs' bonuses from next quarter—which should be enough to cover a fair amount of infrastructure.

Dan Aris

There is a correlation, it's just not a perfect one.

Dan Aris