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no.

This is the way it was done in the original show.

Classic. Don't ever change it.

>> ^petpeeved:

That gave me chills.
I think they missed an opportunity at the end though. As the column graphic rose on the wall and Roger Waters was immersed in darkness, it would have been a powerful symbol for a real column to slowly raise Waters to Gilmour's level at the top of the wall so they would be standing on equal ground at the conclusion of Gilmour's solo.

>> ^campionidelmondo:

>> ^JiggaJonson:
>> ^blankfist:
One word: government.

By that do you mean a lot of government regulations working well to benefit the people instead of letting big businesses Cleavland-steamer every one of us into financial ruin???
If so, I agree. Government.

It's true. The Government opened up the market, which is why we now enjoy fast and cheap broadband (I pay $20/month for 50mbit plus phone).


Well you get better than me. UK's garbage for broadband and is known in europe for being that way. Popular broadband company BeThere (subsidiary of o2 i believe) offers £17.99 (that's about 30(+2?) dollars?) for maximum 24 Mbit, and what you actually get depends entirely on your local exchange, they guarantee absolutely nothing. They say up to, and they mean up to. I know people who pay for "up to" 8 Mbit and get around 2.

Oh, and it's not unlimited. Most "unlimited" broadband in the UK has fair usage policies and the majority of those boil down to a hard download cap.

The worst ones? They offer things like £7 per month but a download limit of 5 gigs per month, with 5 gig topups being another 7 quid. Rediculous things like that. People who don't read up and shop around really do get the utter shaft, and even those who DO read up and shop around don't get good deals. Most of them are even owned by the same damned company too.

They're notoriously bad at administration. When my previous provider got taken over by another company, that company "renewed" my broadband contract for 12 months for DOUBLE the price i was preiously paying. They didn't tell me about the new contract though, so when i cancelled it suddenly they charged my bank for £300 contract termination fee. I didn't have £300 so the bank issued a £20 charge. Then i made another payment (thinking i still had that extra £20) and got charged £20 AGAIN and now i started getting charged for being in arrears too.

I phoned them and it took me a few days to even get rid of the 12 month contract i'd been volunteered into, getting them to pay all the charges (and phone call charges) took a good few weeks work but i was absolutely incandescent with rage.

Er, rant over! In other words, it's not all sunshine and smiles over here, broadband in the UK stinks.

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>> ^petpeeved:

That gave me chills.
I think they missed an opportunity at the end though. As the column graphic rose on the wall and Roger Waters was immersed in darkness, it would have been a powerful symbol for a real column to slowly raise Waters to Gilmour's level at the top of the wall so they would be standing on equal ground at the conclusion of Gilmour's solo.


Yea that woulda been fantastic.

McBoinkens: think of hydrogen as having potential nuclear energy. In the same way that wood or paper has chemical energy, i.e.

C + O2 + activation threshold energy --> CO2 + additional energy given off

then, from a nuclear perspective,

H + H + activation threshold energy --> Helium + additional energy given off.

but in this case, the element hydrogen becomes helium not by changing or sharing electrons but by jamming two nuclei into one atom.

All elements have potential nuclear energy and if you pump energy in they get closer to iron on the periodic table. Higher-level elements give off additional energy when they undergo fission (e.g. uranium in power plants). Lower-level elements give off additional energy when they undergo fusion (e.g. hydrogen in a hydrogen bomb).

The only thing that you have to do is provide sufficient energy to overcome the threshold. That can be a very big amount, but if you harness it, you can use it to keep the process going in the same way that you can use a pile of wood to keep a campfire going because it generates its own heat. The sun essentially works like this.

@Sniper007

Eating locally won't help you when you have a local disaster. You missed the point. If everyone is using the maximum available land, nobody has extra food to help when someone else has a shortage.

As to deforestation, and climate change, the whole planet's system is self balancing. More CO2, means faster and stronger the vegetation growth which in turn produces more O2 at a faster rate. More CO2 for humans means shorter life spans, which means less population growth. There is no ability for human intervention to change this global balancing act.


CO2 has more than one effect on the planet. Even if you assume that plants grow faster and stronger with more CO2 (which is bullshit since they need nutrient food in the soil as well...CO2 is just one part of photosynthesis), CO2 is still a greenhouse gas. Furthermore, when the atmosphere is heavy in CO2, it also causes the ocean to become more acidic, which affects all sorts of ocean life, and therefore the food chains which we rely on. You're right to say that the world is self-balancing, but wrong to assume that human survival is automatic no matter what we do.

Maybe the world's limit is 30 billion if people are, as you say, crammed into cities, and the rest of the world is farmed. MAYBE, just MAYBE, that's NOT the most efficient way of living! Maybe people have minds of their own, that they can put to good use to produce their own food on their own land with their own hands as they desire.


No, look. Of course people have minds of their own. I don't see anyone saying anything to the contrary. You talked about it taking 1/5 of an acre earlier to support a family with a vegetarian diet. It's more like 1/2 acre per PERSON. Some land is not suitable for farming, but is suitable for livestock pastures.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008130203.htm

So, say we supplement our vegetarian diet with some dairy and a little meat to efficiently use all the available land to feed more people. Check out the math:

http://one-simple-idea.com/Environment1.htm

It doesn't work out. There isn't enough land to support a trillion people...not even close. Not even 1/10th of a trillion. Even your revised number is laughable with current practices. So, say we throw in some urban farming...vertical farming in the form of skyscrapers that produce food. Cool...we've got a shitload of people now. Who even says that's a worthy goal? How can you morally argue that more people is always better? You've said a bunch of stuff indicating that's what you believe, but you haven't provided any reasons other than something to the effect of "human brains are amazing and can figure stuff out".

I don't think the speaker in the video is advocating global planning...at least not in the form of a world government. I don't think he's assuming that he's smart enough to know how to plan everyone's lives, nor do I think I am.

What he's pointing out is that populations naturally slow their growth as education and health increase. When you're pretty sure your children will survive, you don't feel the need to have 6-8 in order to have 2 that survive. When conditions are good enough to allow the survival of 80-90% of children born, parents also feel like they can provide a better life for their kids if they're dividing their resources between 1-2 instead of 6-8.

So, you don't need a global government to reduce population growth, you simply need to assist people in improving their health and education levels. Charities and individual countries can do this on their own. So what if they organize their efforts? It doesn't have to be central planning on a global level.

Personally, I think it's better to live within our means. Even if we could grow to the trillions on our little planet, why not do it slowly and carefully? Why do we need a giant population? Why do we all need to be "blessed" with giant families? Why can't we enjoy other peoples' families? As a country, we don't even need large populations for wars anymore. Nuclear weapons and conventional weapon technology ensure that future wars will be fought with very small numbers of people compared to the masses needed in the past.



If you didn't read all that, just answer this: What's the overall purpose of a huge world population? How does it benefit me or anyone else to be born into a crowded world?

As to hundreds of trillions, yes, my mistake. I meant hundreds of billions, or, nearly a trillion. A family of four is below the replacement rate. Not all land is suitable for farming NOW. I'm farming my 10' x 5' cement patio, and an empty parking lot nearby is being farmed by someone else; so it's hard for me to believe it can't (or won't) be done if the demand is great enough. It is tremendously inefficient to ship food for thousands of miles, and yes, if errors occur in that process temporary starvation may result. Eat local if you're concerned.

Natural disasters occur now, and kill hundreds, even thousands of people. Thousands of years ago, long before the planet reached a billion people, natural disasters occurred, and killed hundreds and thousands of people. Famine and starvation are as old as history itself. It will continue to occur into the future. Certainly, we ought to avoid the effects. But are we to going to tell someone not to have a child in fear that the child may someday die as a result of a drought or a hurricane or an 'unnecessary death'? That is folly. I say, be born. Live. Die. It is better to live for an hour and die than to never live at all.

I agree that "everyone living their lives as best they know how while ignoring everyone else" is a horrible thing. But the supposition that having children IS 'ignoring everyone else' is disingenuous. In my personal experience, everyone who has been exposed to families with children have been blessed by the presence of the children. When they are no longer children, they become men and women who engage with humanity for mutual profit. If there are cases to the contrary, it is not because of the existence of the child (or the man or the woman), but it is because of the errant behavior of the same. The errant behavior is corrected through thoughtful communication concerning belief systems and purposes.

As to deforestation, and climate change, the whole planet's system is self balancing. More CO2, means faster and stronger the vegetation growth which in turn produces more O2 at a faster rate. More CO2 for humans means shorter life spans, which means less population growth. There is no ability for human intervention to change this global balancing act.

Maybe the world's limit is 30 billion if people are, as you say, crammed into cities, and the rest of the world is farmed. MAYBE, just MAYBE, that's NOT the most efficient way of living! Maybe people have minds of their own, that they can put to good use to produce their own food on their own land with their own hands as they desire. Maybe, just maybe, global governance is grossly inefficient as is global planning. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the human mind is this planets greatest natural resource, and maybe THAT is what is being grossly underutilized.

That seems to be the heart of the problem. Humanity is not merely inert dirt that is to be rearranged and placed at the whim of the theoretical global planner. Each human has the same mental capabilities as the global planner, and may have different designs for his or her future. There are gross inefficiencies that exist which will lead to famine, starvation, deprivation, death, misery, and more. These inefficiencies are found in the contents of the mind, not the mind itself.

i want to tell you about the creationist museum, which is funded by the same people who fund Don Mcleroy's campaigns and the other young earth creationist who have been elected to the board over the last decade.

so about 30 minutes south of my town is "dinosaur valley state park".
which is awesome. on the paluxy river and full of fossils.

just outside of the park however, is the creationist museum.
run by a man who awarded himself a phd from his own unaccredited university.
this man claims to have found proof that dinosaurs and man walked together along the banks of the paluxy river.
he fancies himself a jr paleontologist.

you can purchase replicas of his "proof" for $25, he of course can't display the ACTUAL proof because that's locked away in a safe deposit box somewhere.

the creation museum is housed in a small trailer filled with beautiful art work of the 6 day "creation" event. there is also a giant piranha in small, dirty fish tank. the existence of this giant piranha is supposed to prove that under certain conditions (special lights i think) that things can grow giant sized, and somehow that proves the earth was created in 6 day.

the main feature of the museum is an hour long video which details the creation and how the flood caused the continents to split, sent beautiful pink lights into the atmosphere, changed the climate and killed off the dinosaurs. in the video, mr. dr. phd, uses extremely large scientific sounding words rapidly and in succession. this causes some confusion. it caused my friend and i too look at each other and raise eyebrows to confirm that what was just said didn't actually make any sense. it made the family in the front row nod in understanding. we could tell by looking at them they'd never actually bothered to find out what words meant before seeing this video.

the museum also contained some plants. and i think what was supposed to be a replica of a hyperberic oxygen chamber, but i don't know why this was there. and i don't really remember now anyway.

at the front desk there are all kinds of books for sale. books written by mr. dr. phd explaining how dinosaurs walked with man, and how he discovered the proof along the banks of the paluxy river in the late 70's or something. we attempted to browse the books without laughing hysterically. but i had to go after we overheard the family talking to the volunteers at the counter about how someone found pterodactyls alive and well in south america recently. and the wife proclaimed that she often prays to god for an explanation of dinosaurs and how mr. dr. phd answered her prayers. after that i about lost it and had to go out to the parking lot so i could laugh a lot.

oh, also on the property is a large glass building that is the future of home of the new and updated creation museum. before mr dr phd decided to build that, he was going to build a huge biosphere and pump it full of pure O3. because if O2 is good for you, O3 must be really good for you, he was attempting to prove that it would turn him into a giant. But then, someone informed that O2 is actually mixed with heavy amounts of nitrogen before you inhale it, and that O3 is actually ozone and would kill him.

in conclusion,
please, please start messing with Texas.
though i'm sure if you do at least 26% of the population will just demand that we succeed from the union again.

EDIT: so it's been about 2 years since i've been to the museum, they apparently have a website now.
http://www.creationevidence.org/

@Fade:
pssst, magic isn't real.



Pssst. Magicians aren't actually trying to do real magic.

anyway you bringing up magic is meaningless in this context. This was a stunt. Nobody but you is claiming that this was magic.



It's quite relevant since Blaine gained fame through his magic specials, and his stunts are often televised along with his magic performances. Besides, you're not the only one to engage me in this conversation about magic in this thread. But I agree, Blaine has morphed into more of a stuntman lately.

@gwiz665:
And to me holding your breath for 17 minutes means you're in league with some dark forces for certain.



The problem I find with all these stunts is that when David Blaine does it, he gets huge publicity because he is a celebrity, and when other people do bigger and better things, nobody gives a f*. For example, Tom Sietas beats Blaine's record not long afterwards. Does he get a TED talk even though he's been breaking static apnea, static apnea w/ O2, and dynamic apnea records for years? There's so many feats of human accomplishment out there. Do they all need David Blaine to make an attempt before they get some recognition in the media?

Maybe I'm just too cynical about our celebrity obsessed culture.

Sure it has a higher specific thrust, but they still haven't solved the problem of getting enough electricity to run it on a spacecraft. You can't keep a fission reactor cool with nothing but black body radiation from the surface of the craft unless it has a huge surface area. If they shoot a huge laser at the craft, converting that to electricity is still going to have low efficiency, so you still have the problem of cooling. Obviously the high weight-to-power ratio of any kind of chemical battery would defeat the purpose and probably result in an overall system no better than H2/O2 rockets. The best they've got is betavoltaics and photovoltaics. 500 square meters of solar panels to produce 50KW at mars' distance.

The plant to human ratio for o2 production is vastly lower than I imagined! This will be a fun experiment, be doing this next payday

Not only do plants need O2 for aerobic respiration (at night) but pure CO2 is also deadly to not only the plants, but the bacteria in the soil that are needed for plant survival (nitrogen fixers and the like). As mentioned before, pure O2 is also deadly, so is pure CO2, in fact, as far as I know, nothing lives in pure gasses (perhaps I'm wrong there, but I've never heard of an organism that can survive in any single gas environment).

Psychologic- From what I've heard, the answer is probably about 3 deg. C. before the methane release is a self sustaining, accelerating process, max 5 deg. Climatologists have recently (finally) admitted that even reducing CO2 emmisions to 0 today would not end global warming for at least 1000 years. The temperature levels from CO2 alone will most likely raise at least the 5deg. C in that time period (most likely in the next 25 years using todays conservative estimates, probably sooner. Methane is already boiling up in the arctic at alarming rates, and these added gasses aren't considered in the climate models that are public.)
Now we get to the unstated problem of CO2, it's raising the acidity levels of the ocean to unliveable levels. The number of "dead zones" are multiplying every year. I don't know for certain, but I have to believe that putting the methane in solution would accelerate the acidification of the ocean (like in the great extinction) killing most living things there and above (can you say acid rain?).
I've recently read that higher temperature water has a difficult time keeping O2 in solution as well. Most things in the ocean require O2 to live. Massive fish kills cause massive bacteria blooms, which release toxic gasses and liquids themselves, killing the surviving sea life. I, for one, don't eat fish, but I still like having my oceans alive.
The reality is that we're hosed. Stop having children people, unless you are sadists and are having them in order to force them into a miserable and short life. Children today have little to no chance of survival to 70+ years, and the insane numbers of people are the main reason for every problem facing the planet. There is no legitimate reason for having more people beyond selfishness. Get a grip and start doing the right thing, or we all suffer the consequences (which are already nearly unsurmountable).

what is happening exactly? Is the fire inside the tire causing such a demand of O2 that it is rushing in? Kinda like an artificial back draft?