Its simply not possible for the population to keep growing period, and the rest is COMPLETELY MOOT. The fact that they've collapsed several conversations is logical sewage. If we could address energy, and natural resources, and geopolitical conflict, and the shear environmental catastrophe that would precipitate from an earth with twice its current population, the extreme probability that a super plague would almost certainly wipe us out couldn't be avoided.

The fact is, that part of addressing the 22nd century energy needs requires that we address the 21st century population problem. The good news is that once you bring education, medicine and birth control to a modern society, the population stabilizes in a generation and then even begins to drop. We have an exceptionally good shot and dropping the human population globally to just over half its current level by end of century if we reign in the religious zealots and help the emerging nations join the 21st century with all the benefits of a growing technology.

Of the Liquor store owner who want the DMV to give him two vanity plate for him and his wife. He wanted to split the word COCKTAIL between the two cars.

Its not liberal fascism. The whole liberal conservative thing is window dressing, there ain't no such thing as liberal fascism. You're state is fascist or its not. Our state is fascist. Any illusion to the contrary can be cured by a sufficiently long detox period. This is a nation of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation and politician's position on Gay Marriage only exist to get the "Rubes" as you so elegantly put it, distracted from the fact that they're being rectally assaulted.

My friends, they walls keep getting higher and the passages narrower. here's a bit of useful information. After the dip, comes the shearing, There are the herders and the Lamb Chops, and I don't expect anybody writing here is a herder.

Conservatives no.... corporate hit men yes... Justice Scalia (gawd those two words don't go together), would pass off on this law so fast, it would cause time to flow backwards...

And then enjoy all that sudden new free time... you wanted to lose a little weight for 2013, boy have I got a plan for you!

Hell with Congress, the Big O is standing smack dab next to JOE BIDEN, a man whose nose is so deeply buried in the crack of service corporations that he can accurately determine whether or not they're brushing the backs of their teeth!

Ooooo! ooo! oooo! Make it Ferengi!!

No you hit it on the head, I am absolutely clear that the preservation of liberty may demand the sacrifice of life, and that free men have that choice, and that it is an inseparable part of the liberty to be able to choose. However, being denied free access to the necessities of life is itself the greatest threat to liberty (and free access is the crux, the phrase that rubs some raw, because in an environment that demands quid pro quo, free access might mean simply giving the resources to those in need or it could mean just be making certain everyone has the opportunity to participate in the economy of needs.)

When you are denied the right to life, your only freedom is to choose to die, and that is no freedom at all. Without choice, there is by definition, no freedom.

I get it, man does not live by bread alone, but man needs bread. The list is Life then Liberty. Being free to starve to death is not freedom. So true Liberty inherently demands that man be free of want for basic needs. Or perhaps that every man has free access to the essentials of life. I would assert our current society is broken precisely because a growing number of people have no access. When there are fewer jobs than workers, those remaining unemployed through no fault of their own, have been excluded from participating in the basic transactions of life and liberty. Some of you will argue that they are responsible for not being fit to compete, and I would repeat, if there are fewer jobs than workers then there will always be the ones who won't work no matter how hard the workers hone their skills, the entire thing becomes a lottery.

So I would assert that issues the preclude LIFE have a higher priority than LIBERTY and those critical issues that impact both simultaneously are the most important of all. Or are you saying that living free is more important than living? Because with life there is always the possibility of liberty, the converse is not true.

This is great.. so the world is filled with horrors and tragedies and injustices, and as you say a person can only do so much, attend so much. So one of the purposes of our "Government" is to address those issues which we cannot effectively as individuals... or is it? Is this better handled by social institutions, and how do social institutions invent, implement and enforce workable solution particularly in places of social unrest where local governments are responsible for the persistence of conditions leading to catastrophe? We now have the infrastructure for humanity to begin prioritizing the urgency of the problems facing humanity and providing the best and brightest of us to promote possible solutions.

I'm not sure what it will take to make this happen, but I would love to have this be the topic of discussion for the entire race, because this self obsessed, sleep walking state that most people live in is killing us all.

And when laws are passed that short circuit due process, fair representation, access to legal remedy? Rendition, how do you fight injustice, once you've been taken off the street and stuck on a plane to be tortured in the Middle East? In theory what you say is true, however the masses have been profoundly manipulated by a government / corporate monolith looking to concentrate power through the structured disempowerment of "The People." How do you address that threat when the growing majority of people are responding to these problems grounded in superstition, magical thinking and divisive dogma? By the way, I'm not saying I have answers, I'm just trying to accurately describe the problem set.

It occurs to me, that people need to create communities composed of people who are awake (they could be virtual, not needing to live in a single locality, though there might be laws representing neighborhoods, towns and cities that would amplify the power of the community intent), and working in concert to illuminate their neighbors, promote taking back concentrated power, decentralizing government and fire-walling banks, corporations and religious institutions such that national and ultimately global interests are focused on human and humane needs (which by the way must be prioritized according to the will of the community.) We also need to educate people in the importance of responsibility and responsible belief. Responsible belief, would give every person the freedom to believe as they choose, but not inflict their beliefs on others. The common infrastructure needs to be devoid of belief and simply deal with the vital facts ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Here, here, the world doesn't work like a bad kung fu flick lining up one challenge at a time. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness... in that order. There are threats to life, those get priority 1, Liberty next, and as we address those threats we may address the things we want, but always first the things we need.

As for doing something wrong, you have to sometime take a sounding shot just to range the target and figuring out your gun. Just make certain the firing range is clear... so Fire, Ready, Aim is a perfectly appropriate first action.

Its so strange you should be having this conversation now. Apathy has this nation by the throat. It takes time to become this apathetic, spirit broken, cynical, resigned. It takes having your dreams squashed, beliefs shattered and dreams abandoned. And lie after lie after lie. On the way home I heard a public service announcement. To date 6,000,000 children have died from AIDs worldwide, all innocent victims of the epidemic. That is more children than in all the preschools and kindergartens and grade schools and High-schools in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Atlanta and Miami combined. Apathy is lethal. This is a preventable disease. Go to apathyislethal.org.

"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing" -- Edmund Burke

Thank you Mr. Troll, you know what you're absolutely right... I didn't take you the least bit serious, I did a quick Google figured I'd throw you a bone, shut you up and be on my way before finishing my cup of coffee... but Mr. Troll is persistent, and clearly not completely brain dead, just unimaginative. my original post was pure blue sky, but perfectly feasible. Of course one could just passively convert waste heat into electricity in situ, and that would moot any other conversation and there are now reasonable technologies to accomplish that with more than a modicum of efficiency. If you had made that point originally I would have had to concede workability, because my idea depends on tech which is at least 10 years away. But you didn't do that, you just called bullshit on the whole thing... so I notice in your last post you didn't even mention the conversation regarding thermal superconduction. Do you concede that in the future city, graphene base high temperature superconductiors might be used to move heat as easily as moving electricity, as well as provide maglev highways or some kind of mass transport? That such technology would make possible exciting and novel energy collection and cogeneration possibilities that don't currently exist (by the way, I didn't make any of that up, folks have been dreaming about these applications for a long time.)

So thermal superconductors would be an effective means to move heat from locale to concentration point. You mention my being at odds with physical reality, perhaps, but I don't think so. However, by all means school me, won't be the first time I was wrong or the last, I just think you're being a disagreeable snot, and are desperately trying to save face. Like I said, though show me to be completely wrong, please.

My original idea was to find a metamaterial that naturally resonated in the microwave region and had small tuned cavities to convert IR radiation into microwaves, again passively, but this must not be an easy thing to do because I'm finding a dearth of literature on such a process (though it should be possible) and most industrial applications are going the other way (from microwave to infrared, which if you think about make sense). I picked microwave in the first place because of their efficiency in passing through the atmosphere and the ease with which a proper receiving array on the moon could convert the microwaves into electricity. That's when it hit me what is the most common way to take an EM frequency and reemit another (often lower frequency) and it was then that it became obvious. Using IR to pump a maser, Duh! So it turns out it's possible to pump a maser with hot gas, citations here, so again I ask what part of my conversation isn't feasible, effective, and efficient. Heat is pumped off planet, and still harvested to do useful work on the moon. All necessary tech should be available over the next 10 years, sooner if it were a priority.

Sorry everyone for feeding the troll, but I found it a useful thought experiment, so I hope it was worth it. Oh, and Mr. Troll, thank you for keeping me honest.. you served a useful purpose, now if you could just get that personality thing handled you might even be able to work WITH people. Oh and the only prima facie eviidence you hold is that I didn't believe you had the intelligence to notice I was brushing you off... and at that I happily admit I was wrong, Your brighter than I thought and I'm still brushing you off. Bye!

I think you missed the point... some of the most important things you will ever do, have nothing to do with having fun.