Wild Bill

You are talking rationally and scientifically about something that will of a certainty be opposed by the environmental movement, that has shown itself repeatedly over the years to be neither rational or scientific but VERY politically powerful! I don't think you are describing the real world at all.

Forgetting about international treaties about any use of nuclear power, wouldn't we expect the "eco-warriors" to go screaming yellow zonkers about any use of nuclear power with pipelines?

I listened to crime stats last week being quoted on a Toronto radio talk show, Smallc. Crime rates are indeed down across the country. However, most times the rest of the story is never mentioned. That statement is true as an average of ALL types of crime, EVERYWHERE in Canada! The complete story is that crimes of violence have spiked up, particularly in certain areas like Toronto. This makes sense, when you think about it. One would hardly expect Canmore to be as much a hotbed of gangbangers as we see in Toronto's Regent Park or at Jane & Finch. Big cities breed a totally different culture with very different problems. Again, as far as the reporting of crime stats, this is why I am always suspicious of such stats delivered through the MSM. Too often the sources have an agenda and play games with the context, emphasis or whatever. Hence the old adage: "Figures lie, and liars figure!" The classic example is the old " 4 out of 5 doctors prefer Aspirin" claim. It may take weeding through hundreds of doctors to come up with 4 with that preference. At that point you take those 4 plus 1 more and you can make that claim legally in your advertising. It is the exact truth but the context and methodology delivers something totally false to a target audience. Yet it has a veneer of statistical science that helps to get the more credulous to believe it. This corruption is indeed a sad thing, since properly done stats of course are very, very useful.

Sure! That must be it.

Why would Earth become a welfare bum? Do you believe that the people who would choose to stay behind would all be deadbeats that did nothing constructive? That's not likely for most, just as it's not today. Societies in Space are not likely to feed and supply those still on Earth out of charity forever. Some sort of trade would inevitably happen. The worst case scenario would be for Man to die off on the Earth. I would think that would make the eco-warriors ecstatically happy! The Earth would become pristine and green again! No evil Man to dirty it up and change the climate! We would see Eden again! By the time such a thing might happen, there would be billions of people living off world. Man would be spreading out over countless stars, or perhaps just living in traveling space colonies. There would be no fear of the race ever becoming extinct. Why aren't you seeing this already happening? Because things have been run by politics and when politicians run things we ALWAYS take the longest and least-efficient path! It was a century or more after the New World was discovered before we began to see a lot of travel and extensive colonization. Things had to progress to the point where private enterprise could take on those roles. The same thing has been happening with Space. How long since Man landed on the Moon? Now we see private companies like SpaceX developing the hardware to exploit Space. We see consortiums of companies being formed to mine the asteroids for minerals and metals. It will happen, eyeball. Just not for our generation. Maybe that was our own fault. As far as Scientologists ans such, they will always be with us, wherever we are. They are a product of human nature.

Well, I raised two daughters. One just completed 4 years of university. Maths and Sciences. HARD maths and REAL sciences, like physics! She was at the top of her class all the way through and is doing post grad work. The other is halfway through high school and just as smart, with different specialties. Both of them were reading before kindergarten. Both of them were very skilled for their age at using the computer. We are talking late 90's and on here. Both of them grew incredibly bored with their schooling and figured that if the "system" was geared to simple levels of knowledge then the people running it must be simple themselves. Not necessarily completely accurate but quite logical assumptions for their age. Remember, they are kids and kids are genetically pre-disposed to think adults aren't all that smart anyway! When each of them began to show signs of developing this attitude I sat them down and explained the way the world works. I told them that the "system" was the way it was and would never change, at least not fast enough for them. However, they absolutely had to do as well as they could as far as their marks went, since society as a whole believed that only good marks showed that you were a smart person who should be hired for a job. Without diplomas and certificates they could know as much as Albert Einstein yet would likely have no job but at McDonalds. Basically, I told them to fake it! I explained the value of keeping their teachers happy and that occasionally they would get a teacher who actually was both smart and good! I did not lie to them and tell them they were wrong. They were too smart to believe that against what they experienced every school day. So I showed them the benefit of not rocking the boat and also channels for them to learn as much as they wanted on their own! I was pleased and proud to see how much they DID learn on their own! Meanwhile, I again made sure that they knew how to access whatever they wanted on the Net and bought them shovelfuls of books! Sometimes things worked out rather cute, like when my eldest became the school computer expert whenever they had a problem, when she was in grade 3. Not just for the kids - for many of the teachers! When my youngest was in grade 1 her school instituted a program of "reading buddies", where kids from grade 7 and 8 would read to the lower grades. My daughter could read better than most of the older kids! So she became a reading buddy too. Want to know how smart a kid really is? Or an adult for that matter? Check out their personal library, assuming they have one. Amazingly, many don't! Don't assume they rely on Net resources, either. Thank Heavens for Harry Potter and the Twilight series. For many kids, these were the only books not required by their schools that they have ever read. You can believe whatever you like, Socialist. I'm an older guy who has a lot of experience and has talked with a great many people over the years. Your arguments are flat-out contradictions to what I have directly and indirectly learned.

I would appreciate a link.

I was not yet born for WWI or WWII, nor was I a contemporary of Nikola Tesla. Yet I feel able to give informed opinions on those subjects. If you started a thread about 19th century Japanese history, I would not venture an opinion, since I know little to nothing about that subject. Although we are all entitled to our opinions, only an INFORMED opinion is worth anything! As for attacking workers, I attacked that particular worker because he came on to me that somehow I should buy his crap products to keep his job so that he could make at least twice my wages. This after I had bought one of his products that had hurt me severely financially. I think I'm entitled to my opinion, which boils down to "Screw him and the horse he rode in on!". Also, why do you and others think that somehow I am letting Chrysler management off the hook? I have worked on assembly lines. Like most forms of work, you can do a good job or a bad job. It is virtually impossible for management to somehow ensure that all workers will do a good job, other than by firing their asses out the door in favour of robots! Screw the Chrysler management of the time too! I didn't care for either of them at the time and I still don't. I walked away from the entire company and bought an import, which gave me FAR more value for my money! Since I don't work in a union environment, I have no regard for labour or management. As a customer, I only care for the value I receive for my money. If there is a problem, I have no use for finger pointing. The manufacturer can just fix it properly and politely or they too can go screw themselves!

Hmm, spell checks don't like it. Neither do a couple of dictionaries. Yet you still insist it is a good word. How about a link to some dictionary? Perhaps you meant "expedite"?

I mentioned that it was the 70's. I'm talking common knowledge here. If you know so little about the history of domestic car companies, particularly that within living memory, how can your opinion be informed enough to be worth contributing? It wasn't upper management who assembled the rear end diffential like a retard so that it would burn out on me prematurely. It wasn't management who assembled the heater control so that the knob would fall off! Give me a break! You'd defend any selfish Klutz if he belonged to a union! You're entitled to your opinion. You should note however that the VW convertible I bought was also union made. Just not by a North American union worker.

Teddy, if I had a nickel for every story I've heard like yours I would have a solid gold computer! This really deserves a thread of its own. It's a topic we have touched on a few times in the past but never really chewed over thoroughly. You know, I have never met a gifted person yet who thought the school system helped him. I have met average people who did well scholastically by dint of hard work and effort but as far as those just naturally very bright, virtually all have stories like yours.

What do you mean by "expediate"? I can't find that word in any dictionary.

Read much history? Did you miss the time frames mentioned? That was the time when Chrysler nearly went bankrupt from widespread loss of customers who felt as I did and voted with their feet. Lee Iacocca took over and with a massive bailout loan saved the company. Geez, we'll be teaching you about the Korean War next.

Why? I have never yet known a very bright student who found his classroom time anything but boring. School is aimed at the middle and bottom of the Bell curve. Bright students are ignored or more often, resented.

Things don't quite work like that, eyeball! First off, the faster we get off this ball of rock the faster we have access to literally infinite resources. Very quickly we could get literally everything we need from asteroids, the Moon and maybe other planets. To send it back to cover the needs of the earth could be cheap and easy. There could come a day when the earth becomes fallow and returns to the way it was in perhaps the 1700s. People would still live here only because they absolutely wanted to, perhaps for religious reasons. Meanwhile, we would expand our population into Space! Like Europe after the discovery of the New World, Earth would become a backwater. Space would be where most progress would be made. Think of it! Once Man is established and expanding into space, we would no longer have all our eggs in one basket. No more worries that one or two idiots could destroy our whole race! Cultures in Space would of necessity become a bit more logical and practical. After all, make a mistake with an airlock and you are dead! Simple Darwinism would improve the species. Tell the truth. Aren't you the least bit attractive at the thought of leaving all the idiots and wingnuts behind?

I would love to see a system where a student could just show up, pay a reasonable fee and write a final exam. If he passed it, he got his certificate! This would free up all kinds of room for those students who need class time to accomplish the same end and it would save the students who don't need it from becoming unmotivated out of boredom.

Argus, I get the willies just thinking about this idea of his. How many civil "serpents" would this need? How much would it cost? Even with technology to track monitored criminals, you need people to make decisions. Moreover, how on earth could such a system PREVENT a criminal from hauling off and hitting someone, or even killing them? Sure, the "system" would know the criminal's location but by the time authorities were aware of the act and could get an enforcement officer there the victim would be SOL! No concept of the costs or the logistics. Very, very adolescent.

Sorta like stories about how trees and rocks will shout out to Muslims that there is a Jew hiding behind them...

Another dormant post. Pity. The ones most important to the very future of mankind always seem to be ignored, while those about what often is rather trivial run on for pages and pages...

A very long reply. I missed the part where you told me if I am correct about you being an adolescent.

There are analysts and there are analysts. Pick whichever ones support the premise you have already decided upon. Have you not heard the old joke that if you have 2 economists in a room you have 3 opinions?

Ah, but can we have a sustainable economy with no oil companies? Can we thrive by just drafting everyone into CUPE?

I am going to go out on a limb here but you sound to me like an extremely bright adolescent. Adolescence is a stage in our lives when we may have a brain with the power of supercomputer but very limited life experience. In lieu of sufficient real world data we extrapolate to make conclusions but the more and further we extrapolate the more likely we are wrong. In the late 80's I worked for a boss who had fallen in love with a brand new invention - spreadsheets! He created huge business plans and would change values in cells all day long, watching in wonder as every related cell instantly recalculated to jive with his change. He would present these business plans to HIS bosses and they would be impressed, as they were all old and rather out of touch with the new power of computers. They backed him with his plans and of course, they were a disaster!. I had kept quiet as it was the kind of old company where rank had its privileges and a mere grunt should not draw negative attention to himself. However, I had come from the high tech world of electronic distribution and was way ahead of my new employer on things like spreadsheets. I had spotted the fatal flaw with my boss' business plans immediately. Everything on the page was related to a few critical cells with values he had pulled out of his butt! How many units did we expect to sell in the first year? Out came something that sounded great! What would be our profit margin? Pull another great sounding figure out! The whole thing was based on guesses and wishes but the fact that it was in a powerful spreadsheet dressed it up pretty for the rubes! Login, your arguments sound very similar to me. You spin them well in an intelligent manner but too many premises are flawed when contrasted to facts from the real world. This is the hallmark of a brilliant adolescent, not of a wise and experienced man. Logic is only a mental tool, useful but not a proof in itself. You can prove literally anything simply by leaving out any facts that would contradict your argument. I read about how one of my favourite science fiction authors liked to keep files and make graphs and curves about technological and social evolution for Man down through his history. He had one on the speed of transportation, from caveman days when we could only walk, through horses, sail, engines and cars and finally rockets. The curve started off on a very slight slope against thousands of years but at the end took a quick spike upward into a logarithmic curve, since we had gone from horses to Saturn V boosters in about a century. Extrapolating such a curve suggested we would be traveling faster than light by about 2050. Going by the evidence, it was a logical assumption, except it almost certainly is very, very wrong. The speed of light is likely to be a cold, hard limiting Law of the Universe! One fact destroys the prediction, if the predictor is unaware of it. So I would caution you against being too sure of some of your premises. As you grow older they may come back to haunt you. If it makes you feel better, you will have a LOT of company! Including myself, if I am still around.

Well Waldo, you have your viewpoint and you are entitled to it. Allow me to be perhaps overly patriotic however to mention that the only aircraft that flew virtually perfectly right off the drafting table was the Avro Arrow. Everything constructed needs bugs worked out. Except for MicroSoft software, of course. I had occasion to complain to one once about a bug and he explained to me that it was really a feature!

My VW was lightyears ahead of Chrysler for quality. It wasn't just rust. I had that VW convertible for 14 years and it was still running when I sold it. It had only cost me minimal maintenance. As for union workers, I truly don't care if my car is union made or not. I care if it is of good quality or not. My point was simply I saw no reason why I should support a worker who made far more money than I did by buying a piece of crap that he had made!