It's been hotter AND cooler in the past - and will be in the future, too... You want stasis? That's not the normal state of things - change is. And people tend to thrive when it's warmer rather than colder (witness the population around the tropics as compared to the polar regions). There is quite a bit of evidence that the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period were both as hot as it is now, and world-wide - and both were times when humanity made pretty big leaps forward in agriculture, culture, and science.

FBI just called, they're headed to your place, to protect you from all the keyboard warriors who can no longer post "Assassins en route" in reply to a post like this on "/.", and are boiling over with rage... APK I'm sure will be hopping mad!

Seriously though, your post is offtopic but interesting, and probably mostly true.

Funny, at least where I live, food has only become more expensive. I think it is wrong to lump all technological improvement together. If someone develops a new language for mobile apps, it doesn't make my food cheaper in any way whatsoever.

Then when will the governments of the world take a scientific approach to solving the problem of global warming and reverse this abandonment of nuclear power? Their actions are telling me that nuclear power is a greater threat to humanity than global warming. Is that true? Where's the studies telling us that?

I've seen the studies and there is no carbon free future without nuclear power or reverting to a preindustrial economy. There's no powered flight with windmills. Solar power can't make the trains run on time. The only reliable means we've had to bring bulk cargo across the sea is with ships powered by uranium or fuel oil.

I keep hearing on how we can't use nuclear power until we develop a reactor that is "safe". First, we already have designs that are exceedingly safe but no government seems all that interested in building them. There's a few exceptions to this but all governments of the world that claim to see a threat from global warming should be embracing nuclear power. The second problem I see with this "logic" is that we can't know if we've built a "safe" reactor until it is actually built and tested. So, this idea that we can't build a reactor until we "know" it is safe is just a circular argument on why we can't build them.

These banshees screaming about global warming will demand a perfect solution before we can get to any solution. I thought that this was such a dire threat that every solution must be considered. Telling me that nuclear power cannot be considered is telling me that these banshees don't believe their own bullshit.

If nuclear power cannot be a part of the solution then what is their actual motive?

The whole free speech argument is and always has been total bullshit. You're free to set up your own server, with your own website. Who's stopping you? Not slashdot, that's for sure.

Arguing that anyone should have to post your speech is a direct limitation on their freedom of speech. You can't compel a business to host your hate speech, and that is what most of the anonymous posts were lately. It had gotten to the point that I had decided I would do a study and inventory all the anonymous posts for today, tally all the hate speech, and rank it by category.

There's no anonymous hate speech to count any more. I'd say "dang" but I don't miss it.

Since you mentioned Thomas Payne, you're still free to take your printer, print up some pamphlets, and distribute them anonymously. Except that wasn't truly anonymous even then, since you had to either own or have access to a printing press, and people even then wouldn't take kindly to you skulking around their homes at night to drop them off

I don't post anonymously, and I've been the target of plenty of hate, both online and in real life . It's called having the courage of your convictions, and where we get the phrase "stand up and be counted, as in when votes are taken by standing up or a show of hands.

It's a core part of democracy, because you should be able to tell when your elected representatives are stabbing you in the back.

BTW, I don't even use a nym - that's my legal name. If I say it, I should be willing to stand by it. I'm no coward.

The only difference is we no longer have a ruling class that rides around on a horses, kick us out of the way, and saying "out of the way peasant!" Now they just ride around in limousines and don't even bother with the "out of the way" part.

And what's next, after we find out that getting rid of anonymous forums just causes people to open sock puppets, will we force all forums to use some form of a real-life ID per user? Something like India's Aadhar?

While I also tended to ignore most AC posts, I am worried about this trend.

... and offers the most immoral predator great success, which is itself a great failure of society to self-regulate.

And not a goddam thing to do with anything.

We can plug a number into a quadratic equation and rise up the nonlinear asymptotic and get a great shock at the expansion.

Doing so, what have we learned about the parent?

Not a goddam thing.

Implied assumption needed to reach conclusion you've reached: we stay bound to this planet and never use any extraterrestrial resources (other than energy from the Sun).

You have provided zero explanation as to why you made this assumption.

Why do you think that humanity will not eventually go beyond this planet?

Ah, you're also utterly unaware of the fact that one of the keys as to why growth has accelerated so much in recent centuries is because we're more efficient - i.e. we're learning how to do more with same amount of input, rather than the growth of old, where the only reliable way to increase output was to increase input by the same amount.

Females are head of males in terms of biological development, way behind males in terms of social development for their entire lives, at least in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Pick one from this list that serves a nearby community, then come back and report what percentage of the victims are female.

And here you equate male sexual prowess with success. So very wrong.

I am rather old, and based on your sentiments repeatedly expressed above, I suspect I've been married to the same wonderful woman (engaged at 19), far longer than you've been alive. My adult children, while only slightly less flawed than I, are wonderful humans that I am eager to spend time with. Perhaps it's possible in your dark and twisty world to have the same blessing, but I doubt it.

Too harsh I think.

Complex questions can be answered at levels tailored to the capability of the inquisitor to understand.

I suspect that a question was asked and instead of evaluating the source and providing a reasonable answer, the dude or dudette who didn't actually know the answer threw a bucket of maths on the inquisitive.

It's unfortunate that an opportunity to enlighten failed. The blame is solidly on the explainer.

I don't really care how you explain your being misinformed/intentionally lying to yourself. I merely pointed out that you were engaging in it.

I really didn't have any point beyond that.

Technological improvements do tend to make things cheaper. This includes not only stuff like phones or cameras, but also food, energy, and building construction costs.

So in theory (but not practice), the quality of living of all people, including the poor should actually go up. (And it does go up in many cases. Say what you want, however Walmart for example brings cheap food on the table).

However one thing that keeps everyone down is the fixed land (plus the ever increasing regulations here in Cali. Rooftop solar is not mandated for example). We can build houses more quickly and for a lower price. However we cannot even when we need and want. So, people started living in vans, sharing a house with other families, or outright on the streets.

The only thing that keeps us down seems to be NIMBY-ism. Please do not blame tech for failure on this regard.

Don't go around saying that world owes you a living. World owes you nothing. It was here first.

-Mark Twain.

P.S. I'm not american. I'm just sane and aware of realities of the world, unlike coddled morons such as yourself, who think that world is a nice place where empathy towards those not a part of your immediate family is a norm rather than an extreme exception.

It wasnt "just right", like some grand design or coincidence, we are the inevitable results of the chemistry and physics of this partof the universe. Mark my words, there will be others, and they may radically different, or uncannily similar, and developed to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the local chemical makeup, but there will be others. Life is natural and inevitable.

There's one of the sources of the difficulty you're experiencing. (There are others and I'll get to that.)

Science is not faith-based. It does not ask you to believe. It doesn't even ask you to accept. Rather, it encourages and applauds skepticism.

You're not equipped to understand the maths.

I don't say that to disrespect you. Few of us have invested the time to understand the maths.

If a person cannot explain a scientific principle to you in clear lay language, they do not know the answer well enough.

There's a solution: Read articles for the lay. Asimov, Sagan, Tyson, others.

YouTube has many live presentations by scientists that will knock your socks off. Seriously.

To understand fundamental sciences, maths is a requirement. With or without the maths, the world still works and you're capable of understanding it.

We can play soccer without calculating the coefficient of elasticity of the goddam ball.

Fukushima is local problem, and don't be a tard and talk about the one extra xenon atom per cubic meter that was detected in California due to Fukushima, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter? It's spread halfway around the fucken world and you think it doesn't matter. It's not contained, it's still leaking shit everywhere, and there are millions of litres of contaminated water in temporary containers that are also starting to leak. Don't get me wrong, I am all for nuclear power, if it's done right. But making excuses for Fukushima and blowing Chernobyl out of proportion is just fucking retarded.

no Chernobyl not contained as reactor melting down without containment was open to sky

Briefly, and then they sealed it up. Fukushima has been leaking since day one, and is still leaking. Does the ocean have to start glowing fucken green before it matters?

AC postings used to be the heart and soul of the board. They harp back to the days before accounts when anyone could post. With AC disabled or gone normally I would bitch about it. Saying something about how they are destroying the board and the /. culture.

Meh. Slashdot culture left with hot grits Natalie and Ogg the caveman. Fuck it.