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Syndicate
The good news is we're still here. Will we survive our own technological adolescence? Who can possibly know?
Oh, I never said WE wouldn`t survive. WE will do just fine. Other species.....not so much.
I guess what I`m trying to convey here is we will, maybe, excel in the technological realm, but our history suggests we will be the same conquesting species we have always been. Thus I pity the species that comes into contact with us if we are in a technologically superior position. That is all.
And I think that if we do survive tech adolescence, we might also outgrow this current phase of human development. ie predatory capitalism. We might change from a society addicted to energy derived from dead plants. We may eventually value knowledge and clean drinking water more than material possessions. People like Karl Polanyi believed we were never so materialistic and greedy as we have been cajoled and prodded into becoming over the last 30-35 years or so. I believe humans value people and relationships more than money or material acquisitions. People around the world know that things are not right today. And at the precipice we will change. Before we collectively step off into the abyss there will be change. Change is happening now.
But our predatory socity is not based on fossil fuel, it is only enhanced by it. Face it Fidel, we are crocodiles. Technology is not freeing us but further enabling our predatory ways.
We will have to find energy sources other than fuel from dead plants if we want to maintain technological progress. Fuel from dead plant sources isn't very advanced. The precipice is rushing toward us. Kardashev and Dyson said we will most likely learn to harness the greatest source of energy in the solar system and perhaps only few thousand years later, the galaxy. There is no future in blood for oil wars of conquest. At the precipice we must change.
Maybe a technological precipice, but our resolve to crush all other species remains. I am afraid I am not so jingoistic with regards our `progress`. Our species has and continues to prove itself predatory, thus I cannot cheerlead our advancement.
And since there is no future for a world of predatory capitalism, we must change. Change is in our genes. At the precipice we are genetically predisposed to change. We are running out of time, though.
I don`t know about predatory capitalism. I just know about predatory behavoiur, and that is us. Capaitism or not, we bite. Get it. Communism, we bite, socialism we bite, we are predators. We are crocodiles in spirit. Fuzzy bunnies in flesh. I have no hope for us. Yes I can say I am actively rooting against our species.
Some of us lived through the cold war era, and we think the problem is predatory capitalism in this post-cold war era. And we've noticed an increase in wars and aggression by the Atlantic Alliance countries since 1991. All wars are resource grabs since imperialist times through today. But things are not going so well with funding of wars. It is incompatible with the post WW II promise of freedom, democracy and global prosperity. During the Vietnam war, for instance, predatory capitalist nations France and the USA were viewed the world over as not just to have supported the wrong side - they were the wrong side. It's happening again today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria. Today they are losing the propaganda war just as they did in the 1960's and 70's. The unipolar world they thought would prevail is proving to be unsustainable in a number of ways but especially in economic and political terms.
The last century saw the demise of a number of world empires: the Ottoman empire, Qing empire; Russian empire; German empire; Japanese empire; British empire; French empire; Portuguese empire; Italian empire; Spanish empire; Nazi empire; and the USSR.
That is real progress in a relatively short amount of time. And it's not looking too good for the last vicious empire in this century, don't you think?
UFO Aliens vs Earth Like 'Bambi Meeting Godzilla' says Michio Kaku (Video)
Or why not give trinkets, beads, and nuclear technology to monkeys? They advise us never make fun of monkeys.
Start your engines!
Landing people on Mars: 5 obstacles
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012-09-02/Mars-obstacl...
With the RedBull stratos project getting Felix Baumgartner up to 128,100 feet (just over 39km), the project broke the record that was previously held by Joseph Kittinger, who skydived from 31km while serving with the US airforce in the sixties. Baumgartner skydived this past Sunday and broke the sound barrier to boot.
On a purely geek level, I'm really facinated by the feat. But it does bother me that corporations (like RedBull) are playing bigger roles in areas that were once the perview of governments and researchers. But then again early explorers' expeditions were pretty much privately funded. Just makes me nervous that corporatism is the one taking charge in terms accessing space and expanding the reach of humanity. Probably won't be but a half a generation before we see a RedBull Cracked Stratosphere competition.
I don't know if mactheknife is around here anymore, but I have to agree with his crocodile comparison. The kinder points of reference sparingly distributed throughout the most persistent influences in the world; that of religion; for the most part have not been able to ameliorate the excesses which are consistent in the demonstrated fact of our predatory nature, and instead have been used in many instances as justification for preying upon others at the same time that the tools to do so have been increasingly perfected over time. Even the perfection of such tools are hailed as part of some higher calling specifically crafted to render this nature into something other than what it is, which to me appears as an evolutionary development formulated to govern the development of human awareness. In examining the evidence, a belief that we will ultimately save ourselves from an early extinction in comparison with other species that have roamed the planet, or that something will eventually drop in to save us, appear to be both grounded in the messianic.
So, the Higgs boson confirms where mass comes from (for the standard model in particle physics anyway). Here’s... oops, here's a good description in lay-terms that helps visualise how it works. Technically, mass isn’t so much a property of the elements, such as hydrogen or iron, so much as it’s a property of their constituent parts. Things like the quarks and leptons, which make up the elements we think of as matter. Interesting to think of mass as strictly a force rather than a material property though. It’s like the flypaper of space.
Part of the hoopla too about the Higgs boson is the possibility that it can lead to the discovery of the elusive dark matter... the mass of galaxies, and component of the universe, which hasn’t been directly observed yet. And then there’s the Higgs-field itself which could help resolve what dark energy is. That’s the energy which is accelerating the expansion of the universe.
Although the Higgs boson confirms a lot about what scientists believed mass to be, it doesn’t hint at what gravity could be. I have to agree that the standard model is rather untidy (Wikipedia says ad-hoc) in it’s pursuit for answers. It’s certainly answering the questions that are within our technological reach. But I really appreciate what string theorists are trying to do in reaching for a unified model for everything though.
Almost Being There: Why the Future of Space Exploration Is Not What You Think
Here's What the Red Planet Would Look Like With Earth-Like Oceans and Life
Astronauts have a down-to-Earth problem that could be even worse on a long trip to Mars: They can't get enough sleep. And over time, the lack of slumber can turn intrepid space travelers into drowsy couch potatoes, a new study shows.
In a novel experiment, six volunteers were confined in a cramped mock spaceship in Moscow to simulate a 17-month voyage. It made most of the would-be spacemen lethargic, much like birds and bears heading into winter, gearing up for hibernation.
The men went into a prolonged funk. Four had considerable trouble sleeping, with one having minor problems and the sixth mostly unaffected. Some had depression issues. Sometimes, a few of the men squirreled themselves away into the most private nooks they could find. They didn't move much. They avoided crucial exercise.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/01/08/moscow-mars-mission.html
‘Siding Spring’ comet may slam into Mars, create one billion megaton explosion in 2014
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/05/siding-spring-comet-may-slam-int...
Mars May Get Hit By a Comet in 2014
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/28/mars_impact_the_red_...