What would be your vision of a better humanity?
- Thread starter livingin360
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Here, from his speech last night, is Obama's dream for needed improvements:
"... We must unleash innovation that creates new jobs and industries, while living within our means. We must rebuild our infrastructure and find new and clean sources of energy. And most of all, after a decade of passionate debate, we must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time of war. For our nation draws strength from our differences, and when our union is strong no hill is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach. ..."
In the spirit of the bold end text, Billy T suggests that part of how we get to Obama's distant horizon, is not with more jet fuel burned in planes, but that all try harder to grow wings and fly there.
"... We must unleash innovation that creates new jobs and industries, while living within our means. We must rebuild our infrastructure and find new and clean sources of energy. And most of all, after a decade of passionate debate, we must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time of war. For our nation draws strength from our differences, and when our union is strong no hill is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach. ..."
In the spirit of the bold end text, Billy T suggests that part of how we get to Obama's distant horizon, is not with more jet fuel burned in planes, but that all try harder to grow wings and fly there.
In MY vision, all Geothermal resources would be devoted to operating greenhouses year round, in the summer when geothermal heat is not needed for the green houses install turbines for power generation.
Millions of square feet of greenhouses will be constructed. 2 acres of greenhouses can produce 6,000 pounds of food weekly! While one square mile of green houses could produce nearly 2,000,000 pounds of food weekly!
The point is that all of these greenhouses would produce fresh fruits and vegetables for low income families who need better diets!
Welcome to MY vision!
Geothermal heat here in Utah is plentiful! We will be building the great Cities of Paradise!
Millions of square feet of greenhouses will be constructed. 2 acres of greenhouses can produce 6,000 pounds of food weekly! While one square mile of green houses could produce nearly 2,000,000 pounds of food weekly!
The point is that all of these greenhouses would produce fresh fruits and vegetables for low income families who need better diets!
Welcome to MY vision!
Geothermal heat here in Utah is plentiful! We will be building the great Cities of Paradise!
The economics of turbine generators, most of the cost, sitting idle except in summer does not look very good, especially as in most locations they would be huge turbines working with some low boiling point (read expensive) liquid to use low grade heat with very low conversion efficiency - limited by Carnot to (Th -Tc)/ Th and in summer the cold temp, Tc, is not very low.
If high pressure steam (Temperature much greater than 100C) is available and they produce electric power 365 days per year, yes geothermal is competitive, but not by a big factor.
Forget the food part time power idea, just grow food in greenhouses where it is very cold. North slope of Alaska, etc. but the local population likes to eat fish.
In the past 100 or more years, we have evolved into political/economic systems which are terrible.
Where voters have nominal control, politicians world wide are focused only on winning the next election. I had high hopes for Obama, thinking he might want to go down in history as a leader who made what he considered to be the best decisions without regard for political implications.
He turned out to be just another 20th century politican. Isaace Asimov in one of his SciFi novels indicated the true nature of a politician. The context is not important. This is what that politician said.
We have the following hopes for the future.
BTW: I do not call myself the Dinosaur because I am huge & powerful. I do not expect to be here when the current systems degenerate into some sort of mess or improve & become something worth while.
Where voters have nominal control, politicians world wide are focused only on winning the next election. I had high hopes for Obama, thinking he might want to go down in history as a leader who made what he considered to be the best decisions without regard for political implications.
He turned out to be just another 20th century politican. Isaace Asimov in one of his SciFi novels indicated the true nature of a politician. The context is not important. This is what that politician said.
We might as well talk about sports or our families. If I proposed and advocated the legislation you want passed, I would lose the next election in six months. If I lose that election, I do not care if the sun goes nova & destroys the solar system 10 years from now.
Some leaders maintain power by force and/or by creating bogeymen to distract the average citizen. Others get elected via sound-bite appeals to the 70-80% (or more) of the voters who are at best naive; At worst stupid. It does not matter which party wins an election: They only care about winning the next one.We have the following hopes for the future.
Somebody will unleash a virus which causes stupid decisons to be incredibly painful. This will not happen.
In 100 or so years, we might evolve into a better system. This could happen.
There might be revolutions in the Western technological cultures resulting in a set of leaders who are statesmen instead of politicians. This only happened once in circa 1776-1800 (in America).
The USA (and others) might collapse (as did the USSR) & break up into a group of smaller units which manage to setup better political systems due to being smaller & more accountable to the voters.
If none ot the above happen, I do not have much hope for the futrure.In 100 or so years, we might evolve into a better system. This could happen.
There might be revolutions in the Western technological cultures resulting in a set of leaders who are statesmen instead of politicians. This only happened once in circa 1776-1800 (in America).
The USA (and others) might collapse (as did the USSR) & break up into a group of smaller units which manage to setup better political systems due to being smaller & more accountable to the voters.
BTW: I do not call myself the Dinosaur because I am huge & powerful. I do not expect to be here when the current systems degenerate into some sort of mess or improve & become something worth while.
Nor do I, but I'm concerned for my grand children. One of the modern rewards for growing old with some understanding of the tragedy that is coming is we won't live thru most of it.
However, the US train went off the tract from sane intelligent government at least 200 years ago:
“… ‘Soft despotism’ is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville {to describe the US of ~1835}… Tocqueville's vision of “soft-despotism” is … mutually corrupt citizens and the democratic state. Citizens vote for those politicians who promise to use the state to give them whatever they want. … The “softness” of this despotism consists of people's voluntary surrender of their liberty …
{The government} extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals …”
Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_despotism which is actually just quoting and paraphrasing from Democracy in America
Quote above is also the strat of OP of my posts here: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2573119&postcount=1
You may want to read my comments there, which agree with your observations and hints that the Chinese System of a hybrid economy (State directed infrastructure building /repair) with free market guided consumer goods and services maybe more appealing to Americans after the US's lobbyist-controlled government by the rich and for the rich has collapsed.
PS - Amazingly perception by Frenchman visiting the US for less than a year when neither of the powerful tools promoting the coming disaster (TV & fiat money) existed!
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That's an excellent description of the problem. Have you got any ideas on how to fix it?
Probably would not "fix" but following would help, I think:
(1) Adopt almost any of the European public health care systems - scrap the US's twice as expensive "for profit" system with the AMA preventing new medical schools from being able to increase the supply of doctors to make some competition in their fees. (Not only do Doctors need to give up profitable practices to staff the new schools, but the states legislatures not knowing how to evaluate and license a new medical schools turn to the AMA, which always states there is a surplus of doctors already and disapproves of new medical schools)
I.e. enjoy life expectancies of 3 to 4 years more at half the cost when Doctors work for salaries (and self select as they mainly want to serve, not grow rich). When there is no profit for medical insurance companies, and drugs are bought in huge volumes for negotiated low costs, not by your local drug store or hospital in small volumes.
(2) Adopt a hybrid economic system quite like the Chinese have. (Some details in link given in my last post, 147.) The Chinese are just starting to enjoy some of the liberties Americans take for granted, which Americans would continue to enjoy even more if their economic system were not destroying the middle class and giving an ever greater share of the economic pie to the already very rich. I.e. liberty and freedoms are decreasing in the US, mainly due poor mass education and TV targeting 12 year olds or less, but freedom is slowly growing in better educated and increasingly wealthy China's masses.
(3) Another idea (replacing over several decades the House of elected Representatives via direct representations via the internet, the iHoR) is being discussed in a thread I started. There, and at end here, I list 9 significant advantage of the iHoR, not the least of which is that if the rich knew that the iHoR would, in 30 years or so, have more votes than the HoR, which their lobbyists can now control, even using bribes at times, then they may want better educated masses doing that voting.
If most of the nine advantages are not in fact being achieved as the HoR is slowly converted (30+ years by either of the two conversion plans discussed in that thread) to the iHoR, then the US can quickly revert to electing Representatives again and forgo the 96.3% reduction in election expenses achieved by only electing 50 senators instead or 435 Representative every two years gave. (That 96.3% cost reduction is another of the 9 "significant advantages")
With the iHoR, the 6 years serving Senators, who are not mainly concerned with getting re-elected in less than 2 years and mutually trading support for projects in their election districts, like the "bridge to nowhere," write all the proposed laws and send them directly to the president, except those that will greatly increase taxes, as determined by the Congressional Budget Office. The high taxation bills must still be approved by the iHoR
Read the OP of that iHoR thread here: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2770368&postcount=1 Now with 96 posts, but feel free to join in the discussion and vote in the poll.
Here are the “Nine significant advantages”:
1) 96.3% reduction in election costs
2) Automatic end to Gerrymandering making secure seat so the election funds can be concentrated in other districts.
3) End to bribes to Representatives
4) End to negative TV campaign ads, with TV time focused on the pros and cons of the pending vote on major bills instead
5) Side effect of better public education (Rich don't support it now as send their kids to private schools, but if population is voting on bills, they will want smarter votes - Propaganda harder to push to the well educated.)
6) End to corporate jet taking Rep's family and friends to Bermuda etc.
7) Greater public participation in government on "hot button" issues, like abortion, military budgets, etc.
8) End to costly waste of tax payers money on "Bridges to Nowhere" as the "horse trading of votes" by Representatives for each other's support of local benefits would be impossible.
9) Reduction of census costs by sampling instead of complete survey (or total elimination of census cost?) - With no Representatives, there is no need of Congressional districts re-sized every 10 years to insure equal representation of voters.)
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Guys.
To try to put this into perspective, while our systems are far from perfect, they are a damn sight better than anything in the past.
Would you prefer the absolute despotism of the old royalty? Serfdom and peasant farmers? The middle class dominated and exploited by hereditary artistocracy? Government by the most powerful gangster? Slavery? Barons with the right to put you to death with no trial?
We now have democracy, for all its faults, and we have a human rights charter. We have laws that prevent the powerful from over-exploiting the poor. We have labour laws. We even have laws to limit the excesses of Wall Street.
OK. None of this is perfect, and we can improve a hell of a lot. But it is still good to see both sides of the story, and realise how far we have come.
To try to put this into perspective, while our systems are far from perfect, they are a damn sight better than anything in the past.
Would you prefer the absolute despotism of the old royalty? Serfdom and peasant farmers? The middle class dominated and exploited by hereditary artistocracy? Government by the most powerful gangster? Slavery? Barons with the right to put you to death with no trial?
We now have democracy, for all its faults, and we have a human rights charter. We have laws that prevent the powerful from over-exploiting the poor. We have labour laws. We even have laws to limit the excesses of Wall Street.
OK. None of this is perfect, and we can improve a hell of a lot. But it is still good to see both sides of the story, and realise how far we have come.
It definitely does, and if you ever feel it, it is a very sudden feeling of being completely out of breath. That's why mountain climbers have such an odd breathing pattern, especially when they sleep. The O2 sensors detect hypoxia and they breathe hard and deep for 5 seconds or so. They get the oxygen level in their blood back up, and their breathing then stops, since they have purged almost all the CO2 out of their blood. After another 10 seconds or so they become hypoxic again and the cycle restarts.
Definitely. For 99% of the people who live at or near sea level, CO2 buildup is the primary driver for the "need to breathe." Most people don't experience oxygen deficits for that reason; the need to purge CO2 keeps them from getting close to hypoxia.
Yep, and that's a big problem with inert-gas atmospheres. By the time you get the "warning" you are already very hypoxic, and you might not make it even the ten feet to the hatch/seal/ladder.
I'm not sure I believe that as the two men that died were inside large steel bell jar which was later found with the dry N2 supply on. The bell jar was about 1.5 feet above the base all the time. They used that small circular gap to crawl thru (avoiding cranking the massive bell jar up more).
If the N2 was on for a long time before they entered, then the atmosphere had little O2 in it when they entered. Are you are saying they breathed out the CO2 and in a short time almost all the O2 in their blood and did not notice the odd breathing pattern you described? I would think that their blood level O2 went thru a phase, as if they were breathing on a high mountain, for at least many minutes and they would have noticed their intermittent / erratic breathing.
If the N2 was mistakenly turned on by someone after they were working in side the atmospheric O2 would have fallen slowly as if slowly going up a mountain. Perhaps an hour of the erratic breathing you describe, which surely should have been noticed.
End world hunger. Start with that. The planet produces 3 times the food it needs, but most of it ends up in our fat bellies and not where it belongs.
Then end world disease. Give Bill Gates' charity $50 billion to do that. Amazing to think a billionaire needs money but he is spending his vast wealth to stop easily preventable things like malaria.
Work towards ending world strife. All nations should give billions to the UN to distribute it where needed to what nations need it for their people. Civilize the world, dammit. I don't mind handing over some authority to the UN as long as we remain one of the 5 "important" leaders and as long as they are truly altruistic.
Educate. Educate the world. Educate everyone.
Tolerate each other. Cut the crap and all get along- people and races all over the world alike. We're all on the same path of life- live and let live.
And oh yeah- give me a billion dollars.
Then end world disease. Give Bill Gates' charity $50 billion to do that. Amazing to think a billionaire needs money but he is spending his vast wealth to stop easily preventable things like malaria.
Work towards ending world strife. All nations should give billions to the UN to distribute it where needed to what nations need it for their people. Civilize the world, dammit. I don't mind handing over some authority to the UN as long as we remain one of the 5 "important" leaders and as long as they are truly altruistic.
Educate. Educate the world. Educate everyone.
Tolerate each other. Cut the crap and all get along- people and races all over the world alike. We're all on the same path of life- live and let live.
And oh yeah- give me a billion dollars.
Have peace of mind for I'm the only thing that I can control.
