I've thought many times that there must be a huge, untapped market for a line of electronics for grown ups. Try searching for a shelf stereo system, for example. Most of it is garish crap, burdened with all kinds of obscure functionality most people will never use. There are systems more minimal and adult-looking, but "minimialist" doesn't mean "user-friendly." What I'm talking about is a system that looks nice, is of relatively good quality, and for which you never need to read the manual. It's just obvious how to work it.

Car stereos are the same way. They almost all sacrifice function for style.

And alarm clocks. How about an alarm clock with a panel that you flip open, and behind it is a simple, phone style number pad. To set alarm 1, you press

[Set Alarm 1] - [7] - [3] - [0] - [am] - [Enter], then turn a little analog dial to set the volume, and flip the panel closed.

Done.

lllll Alaska Jack

The idea that someone's great-grandson should be taken as some kind of authority on what his grandfather would think -- which in ITSELF is just an "appeal to authority," void of any real meaning.

So this is an appeal to an appeal of authority. Or is it an appeal to authority of an appeal to authority? Whatever, it's meaningless.

- aj

I mean no disrespect, but those sources all seem to cite... each other. To be more specific, they all ultimately seem to rely on that George Monbiot article, which in turn -- provides no source.

I remain open to the possibility that Richardson actually said this, but at this point it's looking unlikely.

- aj

Hey, Mr. chrb, sir.

I know your post was modded insightful and all, but can you point me toward the original source of the Richardson quote? I can't seem to find it. Your link points toward an unsourced citation.

Thanks,

- aj

Reading this, it's hard to escape the impression that you are just grimly set on interpreting the entire scope of history in a way that simplistically blames the American bogeyman as much as possible.

To do this,you have to ignore all kinds of inconvenient facts -- like the fact that the alternative to the right-wing Shah came not from the democratic left, but from the even FARTHER right: Khomeini and his ilk.

Or this part, which is funny: "The war we helped create." "Helped create?" Huh? Newsflash: Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollahs were perfectly capable of doing this on their own. These were two aggressive, militaristic regimes, each bent on regional supremacy. Oh, but of course, it was the big, bad US that made them fight. Sure, ok.

- aj

It is far from clear to me how this is "insightful." The Middle East is one long crescent of theocratic oppression, from Morocco to Malaysia. It's easy to glibly say, "Oh, well, we should just invest half a trillion dollars to make it a better place." How exactly would investing in Saddam's Iraq have made it "a better place?" How would investing in wealthy Saudi Arabia make it "a better place?" How would investing in the Taliban's 6th-Century religious dictatorship have made Afghanistan "a better place"? For that matter, why would the Taliban would have accepted, or allowed their countrymen to accept, your dirty western money?

It's part of the line of thinking that says, "Oh, there's a problem? We can just solve it by shoveling money at it!" In real life, things rarely work that way.

-aj

"$500 billion or so," invested according to political calculations (by which I mean, not market-based analyses that invest according to promising lines of research) = 1,000 Solyndras.

- aj

This will never happen, but not for the reasons you say.

There is a key factor that this entire comment thread seems to miss: The fact that Iran's economic infrastructure is incredibly vulnerable. Their entire economy relies on a fixed set of oil refineries and production platforms that, unlike the missiles, can't be moved or hidden. Iran can bluster all it wants, but attacking one US ship would lead to the destruction of their entire economy. They know this, and so does the U.S.

- aj

It's perfectly clear what I'm talking about, and further, your blanket statement ("doing something to mitigate problems is definitely preferable to doing nothing about them") is wrong.

Someone above noted that it's like saying that, because your car sustains a certain amount of wear on it's daily commute, you should rebuild the engine every night. That would be mitigating potential problems, too. Does that mean it's "definitely preferable to doing nothing"? No, because in this case the cost of mitigating potential problems would very quickly soar past the cost of doing nothing.

That's been the rational case against Kyoto from the beginning. We'd be bankrupting ourselves for a slight decrease in the rate of temperature increase.

- aj

.

Insightful? This is exactly the kind of ignorant, reflexive, argument-from-emotion-not-facts type of short-sighted thinking that used to be ridiculed here on Slashdot.

See my other posts pointing out that bankrupting the current generation -- NO MATTER HOW NOBLE AND WELL-MEANING THE INTENT -- does not help future generations; it HURTS them.

What helps your children is not mindless consumption OR foolish investing. It is wisely investing in things that create value, for them to build on in turn. Now, sure, you can say that implementing Kyoto would be an investment. Fine, we all get that. But that's not the question. The question is, considering its colossal costs, would Kyoto be the BEST investment? The wisest use of our resources? Would our children be better off with crippled economies and a lower standard of living, but with average global temps a degree or two below what they otherwise would have been? Or vice-versa?

Your kind of shallow, college-student-greenpeace-club emotionalizing is NOT insightful, and does not help clarify these issues.

- aj