81–90 of 126 posts
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I thought we were still hovering above $1000 but getting close? Either way another important milestone of exponential gain is the cost of solar!
Are you sure? 23andme.com apparently does it for $100.
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I believe you are correct; the beauty of exponential growth is that at any point you can make the same observation about the previous 100 years.
Exponential growth in some areas. I don't think peoples lifestyles have changed all that much in the last 30 years. In 1982 you could point to computers, networks, and cellphones and say these are going to get far more popular. But, medicine, car millage, and battery power while improved are not that much better. PS: What's so striking to me is how little science fiction has changed over that time span.
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Yes it does - it's about trends, not isolated occurrences (so in that sense I agree with your quibble, just not with your rationale). The frequency and intensity of extreme weather incidents is on an upward (and exponential) track.
Honest question: Is there a good source for this information? Anecdotally it feels like weather is getting more extreme, I'd be very interested in seeing the numbers.
http://ccap.org/extreme-weather-trends-climate-science-and-p...
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Yes it does - it's about trends, not isolated occurrences (so in that sense I agree with your quibble, just not with your rationale). The frequency and intensity of extreme weather incidents is on an upward (and exponential) track.
Honest question: Is there a good source for this information? Anecdotally it feels like weather is getting more extreme, I'd be very interested in seeing the numbers.
http://ccap.org/extreme-weather-trends-climate-science-and-p...
Hurricane Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane at landfall. That's pretty much the opposite of a SUPERSTORM. Much larger hurricanes have hit New England before. For example, the "Great New England Hurricane of 1938" made landfall on Long Island as a Category 3 storm, killing over 600 people. The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 also was Category 3, killing 390 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_Hurricane_of…
I'm not sure. Sandy was 1.8 million square miles. How large was the 1938 hurricane?
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I didn't say western people don't own our brethren anything. I said that coporations are not the problem. And that our coporations don't own anybody anything, beyond respecting the law and paying taxes that is. Also one would expect (and that is what I am hinting at) that the rest of the world will smart up and stop acting as if we know what is the best for them. They are independent people and are not our children.…
Except corporations dodge tax in ways no individual ever could. Oh, it's all perfectly legal, it is called 'tax avoidance'. And corporations as a rule are part and parcel of the societies they're engendered in and quite a few can trace their opportunity and starting capital right back to some crime against humanity, or are in the process of committing some of those during their life-cycle. The countries we plundered…
But according to your previous comment, the West owed the third world an incredibly amount. The Scandinavians are OK because their victims (France farmers, etc) were as bad as themselves. That means the third world was much better than the west from the 14th century forward to modern times...?
As ramanujan noted, most others (Huns etc etc) did at least as bad when they had the capacity.
Your position seems based more in emotions/politics than reason.
(Also, the Scandinavian Viking era had a violent clan society which probably was worse than West Europe even in the "dark" period after Rome's fall.)
Edit: Clarity
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> While I can easily sympathize with your position, rich western corporations don't owe jack shit to third world people. Wow that is so wrong it is terrible. Rich western corporations are rich western corporations because of the 1400s to date absolute rape of the rest of the world by the west. We, collectively including our corporations owe third world people in a way that we will likely never be able to make good on…
jacquesm: As a "third world person", I don't think the West owes anything to us. It's actually a very Euro-centric and arguably racist model of the world to believe that only whites have agency and that everything hinges on what whites did or did not do. Nonwhite people are perfectly capable of killing themselves (and whites!) in huge numbers. Genghis Khan, Shaka Zulu, the Aztecs, and the Arabs conquered lands and pu…
Feel free to read into my words whatever you want but don't make it sound like that is what I wrote it makes any kind of discussion impossible.
The world is a lot more complex and involved than you make it seem, the west does have a debt and I highly doubt it even can be repaid, especially because we're still raping and plundering the African continent as we speak.
That dead white guy you're referring to was actually on to something, he just missed on important little detail: the amount of greed and the willingness to commit crimes that is present in the people that he thought would be happy to make the world work in a better way. The fault lies not with Marx but mostly with those that co-opted his ideas in name only to use as a fig leaf to further rob the general population. Note how every communist country was very keen to adopt the stance that they were owned by 'the people'.
Sure China is happy to sell us chips (and Korea as well) but the only reason that trick still works is because of environmental impact denial and low wages make it competitive to do so. That won't last for ever.
China is economically powerful, but morally bankrupt in many ways. India has similar problems, Africa is going from bad to worse reducing its un-replenishable stock of precious resources at bargain basement prices in deals that benefit no locals other than a very select few. With the loot safely stashed in Swiss bank accounts.
Whatever happened in the dark ages is none of my concern, right now a great many fortunes can still be traced directly back to crimes in the past or crimes ongoing today. And that is a debt that is on the books, not lost in the mist of times.
I completely agree that China and India are where the next huge improvements will probably be made. One of the reason the WIPO is so strong in favor of nailing down IP rights globally is to make sure that the west will get its cut, even if it doesn't actually produce anything anymore. Just another chapter in that book.
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Except corporations dodge tax in ways no individual ever could. Oh, it's all perfectly legal, it is called 'tax avoidance'. And corporations as a rule are part and parcel of the societies they're engendered in and quite a few can trace their opportunity and starting capital right back to some crime against humanity, or are in the process of committing some of those during their life-cycle. The countries we plundered…
>>I fail to see the link between the Scandinavians and their current state of welfare and the Vikings, as far as I know the Vikings were no better or worse than what the rest of Europe was up to at the time But according to your previous comment, the West owed the third world an incredibly amount. The Scandinavians are OK because their victims (France farmers, etc) were as bad as themselves. That means the third worl…
The same does not hold for the Scandinavians and French farmers.
My position is mostly based on bookkeeping.
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jacquesm: As a "third world person", I don't think the West owes anything to us. It's actually a very Euro-centric and arguably racist model of the world to believe that only whites have agency and that everything hinges on what whites did or did not do. Nonwhite people are perfectly capable of killing themselves (and whites!) in huge numbers. Genghis Khan, Shaka Zulu, the Aztecs, and the Arabs conquered lands and pu…
> It's actually a very Euro-centric and arguably racist model of the world to believe that only whites have agency and that everything hinges on what whites did or did not do. Feel free to read into my words whatever you want but don't make it sound like that is what I wrote it makes any kind of discussion impossible. The world is a lot more complex and involved than you make it seem, the west does have a debt and I…
Why is it that rejecting the ideas of Marx led China (and Vietnam, and Singapore, and Taiwan) to unprecedented wealth? Why is Chile rich and Cuba poor? Why is North Korea dark while South Korea is alight? Why was Eastern Europe impoverished while Western Europe was wealthy? Why was the Comintern established, why did the Soviet Union foment revolution all around the world, why did Pol Pot stack up a million skulls?
And, most importantly, what exactly "colonized" Eastern Europe and China and North Korea within the span of 10 years to drive them so far behind Western Europe, Taiwan, and South Korea respectively?
It's all Marx. Every time. You want to atone for something, atone for that. That is your sin: converting millions of indigenous people to an alien, white, Western ideology that promised heaven and yielded hell.