Don't feed the troll. They thrive on attention. You've doubled his comments in this thread by answering.

Yet just in time for New Years! Thank you for the PPs Minty! You KNOW they'll be put to good use

Hope you've been thriving ... all of the best from me to you in the coming year and beyond!

Yes, thank you, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving and am doing quite well

I hope and trust that you and yours are thriving and happy. Be well my friend.

No, I think for it to be realistic, it just needs to be a free download on Playstation or xbox. Something kids can stumble upon.
If you start making it so they are using expensive equipment, that takes the point away, that "anyone" could be that pilot with the skills to fly one of those ships. Put it out there and see who thrives.

My take on this - stop immigration. A warmer earth means a more inhospitable area around the equator. Yet plant life will flourish in the more temperate zones - we're already seeing that with plants growing faster for longer of the year.

The crucial point of this is that if plants/forests are allowed to thrive in the current temperate zones whilst the earth population declines the planet will recover.

If we actively chop down the new plant-life to build homes for the people who's homes are becoming inhospitable we'll turn the planet into a dustball.

@newtboy: He's just plain idiotic. I'll bet many of his "points" come straight from Faux News...I'm pretty sure I've heard some of this insanity before.

Fox News? Really? You don't understand libertarianism at all, do you? Also, you and Voodoo should spend some time making substantive points instead of emotional arguments.

I always wonder how these people ignore the fact that, if their theory about 'self regulating business' was true, it would work that way now. It's because industries repeatedly and consistently DIDN'T regulate themselves and thrived on the public ignorance of their actions that regulations were enacted in the first place. DUH.

Again, more appeals to emotion. That aside, I've heard this argument often from statists. The truth is they tend to forget things like regulatory capture and the sheer number of regulations on the books that create barriers to industry for those without significant capital to compete. These are all unfair advantages the government gives the rich and connected.

Also, I'm not sure if the two of you were asleep when he mentioned that corporations are fictitious entities given legitimacy by the government, and shields the rich from liability? That didn't happen because of unregulated markets.

OK, my reactionary, defensive, closed minded take on this is that this guy doesn't deserve 5 minutes of my viewing time (but he got it), much less 22:29 of it.

I'm totally right there with @VoodooV on this one. He's just plain idiotic. I'll bet many of his "points" come straight from Faux News...I'm pretty sure I've heard some of this insanity before.

I always wonder how these people ignore the fact that, if their theory about 'self regulating business' was true, it would work that way now. It's because industries repeatedly and consistently DIDN'T regulate themselves and thrived on the public ignorance of their actions that regulations were enacted in the first place. DUH.

TL:RD: Flush mix tap for few seconds after not being used for hours. Count to three.

I would say that it is still advisable to flush out the stagnant water from pipes before drinking the water. Not a lot, until you feel the temperature to change. Reason is that while the warm water is now sanitary, it is still warm. Warm stagnant water goes bad pretty quickly, the pipes are NOT clean on the inside. If you have ever seen water mains pipes, you would probably boil your water, brit filter it and most likely perform an exorcision. It's bad, it is really really bad.. The main reason why the water stays drinkable is movement. Moving water is safe, the bacteria that lives on moving water is mostly harmless to us. But 15C to 22C is called "the death zone"; bacteria that thrives on moist conditions, between those temps is the most deadly we can find. E.Coli, Botulinum etc. all explode with those condition. So you take warm water to wash up that last tea, it stays in the pipes and you get a nice shot of bacteria first thing in the morning. Or you keep the tap on for ten seconds, flush out the main colony and then drink a fresh cold water; i'm sure this little trick will add years in to your life (just the fresh glass of water and the feeling we get from that should do the trick..)

But the days of flushing the whole length of pipe several times a day is unnecessary. Only important when it has sit for hours after running hot water thru that particular piece of pipe, maybe just few meters or few seconds. And even then most likely it's 100% safe but the gunk that sits in the pipes is DIRTY.. ffs, we got some wooden main lines still in use in the old town (built around circa 1600).. BTW, the water from those wooden pipes.. excellent, specially in the winter as it is just super cold, totally clear of all bacteria, it's like spring water. But that is mostly because they have been in use for hundreds of year, all the time with moving, cold, clean water running thru them. It's bacterial colonies work with us cleaning it.

Compare that to the other pipe system running thru our homes here: the main heating water that heats our homes, that water is so toxic that every cut you have while working with them, just a drop and you will get infected. It takes minutes and the cut will swell up. And the only really difference is that the heating system is on closed loop, with warm water and it sits for half a year stagnated.. It is still "clean" water, looks clean, doesn't smell. But that stuff is equal to biological warfare..

Why i know this? Well, i'm ex-junkie. Knowing what kind of water you inject to your veins is pretty fucking important if you wanna stay alive.

I think it's mostly about adrenaline & dopamine highs . It's the same reason some people still manage to "enjoy" rollercoasters or skydiving and the like despite basically being frightened shitless by them.

All depends where your threshold for fear lies. Up to a point your physiology rewards you for what it interprets as taking a worthwhile risk, past that point it punishes you with an unpleasant response. e.g. you might get a good feeling from driving fairly fast, but if you push too far that good feeling turns to blood chilling terror.

The key is that everyone is tuned differently, some people get stressed out walking to the shops, others have to jump off buildings to get any sort of buzz. And naturally further to that we all interpret the level of risk differently in different situations. There appears to be quite the split between how people react to intense physical and cerebral stimuli.

Personally I don't really like being shit up by films like in the above, but then when I feel the back end sliding on a motorbike or drop a light aircraft into a stall I usually end up giggling like a little girl. (within reason)

As I understand it It's an evolutionary thing, we need some people who thrive on risk and go exploring and others to stay alive and raise the kids & naturally all of this is taken wildly out of context by our modern life styles. End result: some people watch scary films to feel alive and others have to race powerboats.

I'm sure there are other more emotional/metaphysical reasons too like our inherent fascinations with mortality, cruelty, paranormal etc. (and anything else we don't relate to in everyday life). But the fear "high" is definitely a big factor I think.

I think this is both right and wrong...natural selection CAN be even faster (but is not always) at forcing evolutionary change than 'breeding for traits' is, because breeders are not perfect and may allow unwanted traits or incomplete but wanted traits to continue, but nature is a horrible bitch goddess and if your traits really don't work for her, you simply die. That's certainly not always the case, but when it is nature is better at 'selecting' than humans. The rate of reproduction makes either process move faster.
It's true that humans have artificially created more breeds than nature would likely create alone, because we sometimes like traits that would hinder survival and through breeding amplify them to create a 'new breed'.
Nature forces the one's most suited for their environment to thrive, while humans often allow those less suited to live in their environment to survive for human reasons, erasing natural selection from the equation. Without our 'guiding hand' in their evolution, I think it's likely they would likely have even MORE change in some areas (and less in others) because environments are drastically different and different traits would evolve in different places, creating different 'dogs' such as wild dogs in Africa and/or dingos in Australia, which I think (but may be wrong) have evolved so separately that they can't breed with non-"wild dogs". It may lead to less variation in specific areas/populations, but more variation between those from different areas.

@RedSky - You aren't reading what I'm saying.

I'm talking about finding an equilibrium in which humanity can thrive economically, socially and environmentally.

I'm only saying that things like environmental damage, fracking, certain food production techniques, the current flavor of resource wars, and the fact that a massive proportion of our current population really can't feed itself are all evidence that the effort required to sustain current and future population levels doesn't fit my definition of finding balance.

The only point of no return I'm talking about is that at some point it will be essentially impossible to get to that place of balance that I favor. It's a nebulous concept for sure, but I do think it is relatively imminent and at the very least that we are heading in the wrong direction - especially in light of the notion proposed by this video where exponential growth can give you a false sense of security right up until just before you hit it.

I actually agree with you and think that earth could sustain an arbitrarily large population of say 20 billion or even more.

But we'd have to spend more of our time and efforts competing (sometimes violently) for the resources, we'd have to shape ever larger proportions of the natural world to our own narrow needs, we'd have to put up with a much less pleasant environment, and since it will be challenging enough to just get the resources to feed and clothe your own people, there is a really good chance that unfathomable (billions) quantities of human beings will be marginalized by this system and spend most of their time suffering.

Again, a far cry rom my definition of equilibrium.

As for your notion that vague global threats don't cause change, for starters I'm not sure that's true - there are significant popular environmental movements around the world and also some threshold of self interest can be breached. For example if you look at negotiations over things like the Kyoto protocols you will see that developing nations who are much more susceptible to environmental changes like shifting climates and rising sea levels are significantly more likely to sign on. It's no coincidence that Bangladesh and a few other island nations were the only countries to ratify the thing.

But there are also educational and social strategies that can have a huge effect. I think that you'd get a lot of mileage from just increasing women's rights around the world.

The answer is perilously simple: Soccer. Look at oh, I dunno, Greenbay, and the money that goes into football there. Greenbay isn't exactly a thriving metropolis, but the pride the get from having a good team outweighs the income inequality between the football haves and the spectator have nots. And if you think Americans are nuts about football, it pales in comparison to what Europeans feel about their soccer team.

But you do bring up a very valid point; crime always will flourish in harder economic times.

I know this is a running world joke due to the popular mass production American beers.

But a lot of people dismiss America as a whole because of this joke and I feel it's important to point out that America actually has a thriving and amazing microbrewery culture that produces beers equal to any in the world.

The problem is when microbreweries get to a certain size, they almost always sell out to a larger company and the product deteriorates in to the "perfect always same taste" precision of the mass production beer, losing any charm or personality the beer used to have. As it now needs to be consistently marketable.

The other factor is once these beers do get sold off, you often lose the original brew anyway, you just end up buying a locally made brew with "expert consultants ensuring the same taste", except it never is the same taste because they use local ingredients which inherently have a different flavour, missing the whole point of world beer in the fucking first place.

Basically a few giant beer corps rule the world and wreck everything, turning a beverage that should be on par with wine in to something very misunderstood and generally accepted as a low classing alcoholic drink.

If you want good beer in any country, not just America, the situation is the same, you need to go the micros who still employ the passion and respect the skill takes. Hence I declare the joke no longer relevant.

I guess I should clarify; I think that the pace of our advances is being bottlenecked by our current system because we (as nations) continue to exploit via a relentless focus on profit rather than try to actually spread knowledge and tech as best we can.

A free education system for the world would be incredibly easy to achieve with our current technology, but as nations we don't even try to aim for such a thing. As universities and other education institutions (publishing companies, etc), we have no incentive to truly aim for this in the current paradigm because it reverses profit growth (which, honestly, in the case of education, is pretty much all over-inflated anyway). There's no malicious intent, no conspiracy, and noble goals abound, but we're doing it at a snail's pace out of selfishness.

Individual people act much more nobly than large, well-established institutions. You see a rather strong trend of such large groups behaving closer to the "rational" approach from economic game theory, i.e. the one where self-preservation and gain are maximized first and foremost. If we just rely on our institutions to fix the problems at their root or think that the incidental improvements tied to increased tech and knowledge are being nurtured even half as well as they could be, I think we'd be gravely mistaken.

I think we both ultimately hope for the same outcome, but we clearly disagree on the extent to which our current society(/societies) effectively move towards those outcomes. I would personally like to see us double down on those things that help move us forward.

EDIT: Some examples of ways we're bullshitting ourselves and not doing half as much as we could, for your pleasure.

Princeton University's motto is "In the service of the nation and of all nations" (probably slightly off on the phrasing, sorry), and they have BILLIONS of dollars of endowment. If they and their alumni network took this motto seriously, with their knowledge of business, tech, and science, they could easily bring entire nations out of poverty by simply helping local people adapt tech in sustainable ways to provide food for their population more easily, institute strong education access, and more. Harvard, Oxford, all the other big names are in similar situations. They can do SO MUCH, but just do little projects while answering to their boards about making sure to keep the cash flow positive, keep the endowment growing, keep using alumni donations to pay for things where possible. It's bullshit.

Most large organized religions are also lazy about service. There are many who do seriously just aim at food and medical aid, but most are more interested in conversions and extra tithes than eliminating poverty. How many Christian missionaries of various sects are there around the world? Of them, how many devote their missions to actual service of everyone they can to show their religion through their works as opposed to just focusing on bringing people into the fold via preaching? Additionally, the old "teach a man to fish" concept comes into play here; giving food is good, but we need to be helping people help themselves as well so that they can thrive.

I know shit is very complicated and the answers aren't easy, but we can EASILY do better than this.