WIP

And how exactly did Sasquatches become the equivalent of Palestinians?

A vote for Hudak will be a vote for a Republican clone like Harper! Ontarians have traditionally refrained from having the same party in Queens Park that occupies Ottawa, and I hope we follow that course now.....and cheap booze does not influence my vote anyway, since I don't drink alcohol. I wonder why 'good christians' like Tim Hudak are so concerned about providing cheap liquor for consumers! My guess is that it has more to do with the cronyism associated with each and every privatization scheme of public services, than it does with providing any benefits for the consumer!

Prior to Harper, Canadian governments - conservative or liberal, had enough sense to at least refrain from supporting Israeli aggression and illegal expansion of the settlements. Now that they have forced nearly all of the Arabs out of East Jerusalem and claimed the entire city as their own, and will cut the West Bank in half, into two separate little territories with their latest expansions, what is the point of talking about "two state solutions?" That is nothing but a fraud now, and everybody knows that the endgame for the West Bank will be the fulfillment of Menachem Begin's dream of forcing all of the Arabs out and making "Judea and Samaria" an official part of the State of Israel. And, I would hardly be paying attention to this issue myself if it wasn't for the fact that our Government is destroying what's left of Canada's reputation internationally. Those days when young Americans travelling abroad were advised to put Canadian flag stickers on their bags are long gone!

I hadn't realized that deliberately derailing threads offtopic was a liberal Democratic principle!

It is opinion based on references to facts! As I mentioned previously, approximately half of the book is indexed references to each of the 89 non-renewable resources mentioned in the proceeding 250 pages, and I have no intentions of typing out the whole thing, regardless of copyright issues! What this book and other similar books warning of resource scarcity (like The End Of Growth by Richard Hernberg) point out is that those (such as you) who claim that there will be an endless run of innovations and improvements based on new technology, do not have much of an argument outside of the narrow realm of computers and information technology.....where energy and materials are less important than than increased information capacity. The conclusion that there has to be an eventual endgame to using innovation and technological solutions in dealing with energy needs and finite resources in most industrial applications is a no-brainer. The only debate is where those hard limits are, and when they will start seizing up our present banking and economic systems. The evidence that we have approached the limits to growth is becoming apparent right now to anyone who is looking at the issue objectively. It likely started in 2005, when we most likely reached peak conventional oil, and the present trend of economic growth spiking oil prices and causing repeated declines is a trend we will not grow the economy out of! Unlike the 70's, the last time high oil prices really caused economies to seize up, this time there are no Canterells or North Sea, Beaufort Sea, or other major developments of conventional oil waiting in the wings. What is coming online now is tar sands oil, and tentative developments of tight oil locked in shale deposits. These oils are dirty and expensive -- both in money terms and ecologically. So, even if the world goes to hell driving up CO2 levels, these oils are expensive now, and will rise in costs as developing them will require moving to more energy-intensive deposits. And that makes another book I got this last year: Techno-Fix by Michael and Joyce Huesemann essential reading. Technological progress has not produced those flying cars that we seen on The Jetsons when I was a kid. And that's because Moore's Law only applies to IT, where energy is less of a consideration. When it came to having our own personal jetpacks...they are technically feasible, but practically impossible. High tech medical devices and drugs doesn't really improve our general health and wellbeing as much as imagined. High tech weapons haven't brought us world peace. What happens with every new technology, especially when it is attempted to fix environmental problems, like carbon increases in the atmosphere, is that the "fix" results in unexpected harms being done in the environment that require more counter-technologies to be developed in an attempt to fix them. What techno-optimists fail to realize with every expansion of civilization exploiting the natural world is that nature is a holistic system of interconnected systems. That was essentially Barry Commoner's first law of ecology. As we increase population, energy, resource and land use, we decrease the capacity of the natural environment, we create unintended consequences, such as unexpected and unpredictable changes in weather systems, an acceleration in die-offs of plant and animal species. And putting a halt to the extinction process is almost impossible, because they are the result of an accumulation of causes, not one specific cause that can be fixed with a reductionist technological application. New technology cost-benefit analyses are biased in favour of new tech devices that increase consumption, adding to our collective environmental problems, while failing to improve happiness and wellbeing. And, I'm having a more and more difficult time trying to connect techno-optimism and faith in scientific progress back to the subject of atheism and trying to challenge the notion that freethinkers are showing the way to a better future for this world!

No, life has not improved for the average Bangladeshi, nor has free trade and globalization benefited any other broad mass of people. Only a minority of people at the top of the income pyramid have benefited from free trade. The globalization fraud of free trade agreements has just been a colossal fraud designed to diminish the authority of nation states over their economies, and increase the power of multinational corporations. A good recent example is the Canadian mining company (I forget the name) that is now suing the Government of El Salvador for lost income after getting the boot, and prevented from further fouling the environment in a farming community, even though their drillings and excavations had not reached any seams that were worth developing. On the flipside, governments cannot sue corporations in these free trade tribunals! It's just a sham designed to make sure that they can extract their pound of flesh from the countries where they have set up operations. Now specifically in the case of Bangladesh - what we have here is essentially a giant Haiti...where overpopulation, rising sea levels and environmental degradation has increased the flight to the cities of peasant farmers living off the land. And, that of course, makes them sitting ducks for slave labour operations like these suppliers to Walmart, Sears, and other giant clothing retailers, that want their product at the lowest possible cost - no questions asked! A personal testimonial referenced in a Global Post article on why Khaka is the world's fastest growing city in the world tells the story of a rural farmer named Rahim: Disasters drive mass migration to Dhaka The changes are likely to push still more villagers towards the Bangladeshi capital each year. Standing on a recent afternoon by the river that took his farm, Abdur Rahim told a visitor, “within a week, I want to move my family to Dhaka.” He’d tried his luck in the city once before, in 2005. Rahim spent a year pulling a rickshaw for about $2.50 per day, passing his nights in a vast slum. He came back here, he said, to farm and live again on ground that was his own. Rahim’s surplus crop made him only between $10 and $15 per month — but there were no grocery bills, no rent to pay. If I can interrupt Rahim's story here, that offhand comment about having no grocery bills or rent to pay when he was a poor farmer is a crucial point to make in any valid comparison of living standards, because capitalism only values commerce, or the exchange of money. A major disaster like the recent Hurricane Sandy will both raise debt levels and GDP because destroying a city and rebuilding it...even if it is rebuilt to a much lesser degree than what it was before (like New Orleans) comes across in the books of capitalist economic theory as an increase in wealth; whereas any rational overview of the situation reveals that there has been no real increase in human welfare. And when Rahim was a near-subsistence level farmer, those economic indicators highlighted on your UN-sponsored source would show that Rahim's quality of life should be better even if he cannot afford to feed his family adequately after moving to Dhaka! I am reminded of what my mother tells me of her family's experience of the worst years of the Great Depression in the early 30's, while living in Michigan on a small farm. Her father lost his job when the small car company he worked for went bankrupt, and was unable to get one of the few good-paying jobs at the major auto manufacturers during that time. So, he did odd jobs; and even though he never made more than $300 or $400 a year during that time, the family did alright, because they just spent more time working the farm, and most of what they needed, they could trade for with local merchants. But again...no money exchange....no net worth according to standard capitalist economics! Back to Rahim's story: Ask Rahim whether he prefers the city to the countryside and there’s a pause. Questions like these come from a standpoint of luxury. “If I can earn enough, I like Dhaka,” he said, tersely. “If I can’t earn enough, I don’t like it.” And, that tells us again that just tracking the flow of money does not tell us whether or not people are better off! Maybe a country facing impending doom like Bangladesh (this is why India is spending billions constructing walls and barbed wire fences on their eastern borders) doesn't have much of a choice; but the dismal pay, working conditions, and abuse that factory workers in Dhaka face every day, even when they are not threatened with death by fire, show us that the sociopaths who run large corporations have no concept of generosity or altruism of any sort. They just focus on selfish aggrandizement in the form of constantly accumulating more wealth by any means, legal or illegal, that is available! And how are the national governments, even if they have not been installed in some CIA-backed coup and are actually a faint bit concerned about the people's welfare, going to do anything about these conditions? If they threaten to allow workers collective bargaining or reform working conditions, these companies will quickly inform them that they have other desperate locations where they can set up shop. And that is how free trade drives labour down to the lowest common denominator! What global village? That is just a bullshit construct that exists in the ramblings of stupid media pundits like Tom Friedman! In the real world, globalization has moved production of consumer goods even further from consideration by the average consumer. At least in the old days, you might actually know someone who worked or had a friend or family member who worked at Levi Strauss or one of the other clothing or fabric companies that existed in North America prior to free trade. When the factory is half way across the world, it's out of sight, out of mind; and what could possibly be a better example then the fact that working conditions in Bangladesh that feed the North American consumer their clothing purchases, cannot make the nightly news unless more than 100 workers die in a fire! Well, for starters, go to a Walmart employee site - Our Walmart, to learn about some of the grievances that low-payed Walmart employees have about Megamart, and then consider some of the issues regarding Walmart that have been in the news in the last few years, such as, setting up a special corporate division designed to facilitate outsourcing for their suppliers....shutting down factories and moving to China and helping them with the paperwork and regulations....so much for Walmart creating jobs!; up to 80% of U.S. Walmart employees in some states are payed so low that they qualify for food stamps and Medicaid....essentially making the Company a giant welfare recipient; the six heirs of the Walton fortune have a trust fund that is equal to the combined wealth of the lowest 40% of the U.S. population....and that number keeps growing....in 2005 it was a mere 30%. Anywhere but Walmart! Worth noting that your question is another one of those typical rightwing responses that try to shift responsibility for bad government and economic policy back on to the individual. What difference will it make where anyone shops in the future, when the lack of enforcement of antitrust laws leaves us with Walmart and maybe a Target store as our only choices left?

I heard about this story from the latest podcast episode of the Skeptics Guide To The Universe, where they talked over what is known about this story, and more important - what is not. If they have submitted their research to a scientific journal, nobody outside of this organization knows the details about crucial evidence, like where the DNA samples have been gathered from. Apparently, if they are claiming to have mtDNA, it would typically have to be hair samples if taken from a 15000 year old site. They say they have evidence of a human hybrid because nuclear DNA and mtDNA come from a modern human and a non-human hominid (I forget which was which). The DNA from the "hominid" may turn out to be from contamination of the site and not from the same animal that the mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from. And, it will have to wait until publication, why the other hominid would be called Bigfoot...how do they know anything about the characteristics of a giant mythical apeman who stalks the forests out west, and until now, has never left any physical samples for examination? We have been told that they had to jump the gun and make a press release before publication of their data because a Russian collaborator on the project had already gone to the media. It may turn out to be another 'Cold Fusion' story...referring to two actual scientists - Ponds and Fleischmann, who likely created a deliberate fraud with their cold fusion story that also was released to the press prior to publication and peer review. Could be the same type of story here! And one thing that would be similar regardless of their intentions, is that even after cold fusion failed, there remained a small cottage industry of true believers who kept on working and writing about cold fusion afterwards. That will be even more of an issue with Bigfoot...since Bigfoot already has a small entourage of true believers who run off into the woods every so often looking for evidence.

I guess I quit the choir! Because this is the first time I've checked back on this topic for several days now. My personal opinion is that you either want to learn about science or you don't. As long as your not the Minister of Science and Technology, I'm really not that concerned that you want to force science to conform to your religious interpretations.

When I read this story, I started thinking back to some of the legends and myths of succubus and incubus stories that were prevalent until modern times. It even plays a part in Bram Stoker's original Dracula story where three beautiful female vampires (The Sisters) are keeping the main character - Harker - prisoner and mostly confined to a bed, where they all play sex games with him and drink his blood for a nightcap! I'd say it was a fair trade, and a lot of guys would go along with that deal. But, in Victorian England, these stiff upperclassmen have to maintain their 'virtue' just like the women....so, if you have sex, make sure it's against your will and you don't enjoy it.

It does seem clear to me that we have likely run out of time to reduce population numbers the easy way....like waiting for birth control, family planning movements to reduce overall population numbers. Whenever we really hit crunch time with resources....specifically, like when world grain production totals start declining more rapidly....the more people there are with less food available, the greater the size of the calamity. We could feed a greater population if food distribution was in any way connected to need, but it's not! Those with more money are using their new wealth to increase the amount of meat in their diets and drive grain prices higher. Biofuels are also having a negative effect....especially the idiotic strategy of producing ethanol from corn. As long as the global economy functions in the manner that it does at present, we are headed for an increasingly violent and desperate fight for the resources that are available. No human society has functioned very well when it is in a state of decline. But previously, collapses of local governments and economies have been local; this time, in our globalized world, a collapse will also be global.

Can't help notice that you put 'essential' in quotations...does this mean you don't consider any natural resource to be essential? I can tell you from my own little corner of the universe, that, if you want to make something from stainless steel, you need iron and chromium. Stainless steels require varying amounts of chromium, depending on which type is being produced (anywhere between 12 and 18%) and you can add nickel and more exotic metals like titanium and molybdenum....but you can't substitute your way out of requiring the two basic ingredients. When it comes to the most essential and most used metal for the last 3000 years - Iron - grade quality has been in steady decline as mines are running out of better grades of ore and extracting ores with progressively lower amounts of metals. Anyway, since you asked: From page 57: We may be able to mitigate or even overcome NNR scarcity in some cases through technical innovation, substitution, conservation, recycling, efficiency improvements, and productivity enhancements. We cannot, however, possibly mitigate or overcome NNR scarcity in all or even most cases. NNR scarcity is epidemic, domestically (US) and globally; and it is increasing both in terms of incidence and severity despite our efforts and hopes to the contrary. Our incessant quest for global industrialization—and our consequent ever-increasing demand for nearly all NNRs within an environment of increasingly constrained NNR quantities and continuously diminishing NNR quality—will overwhelm our efforts to mitigate the ultimately devastating effects of NNR scarcity. From page 94: NNR Substitution will Eliminate NNR Scarcity Myth: NNR substitutes have displaced scarce NNRs historically and will continue to do so going forward, thereby dramatically reducing demand for today’s increasingly scarce NNRs. Reality: Technically viable NNR substitutes exist in many cases; however, the vast majority of these technically viable substitutes are not economically viable—that is, the technically viable NNR substitutes are inferior from a price/performance perspective. [Note that both silver and aluminum are price/performance inferior substitutes for copper in the manufacture of electrical wire; each for a different reason!] In other cases, substitutes that are both technically viable and economically viable exist, but are becoming increasingly scarce as well. In the remainder of cases, NNR substitutes simply do not exist. It is safe to assume that if technically and economically viable substitutes for increasingly scarce NNRs were readily available, they would be in use today. Note too that “forced substitution”—substituting a price/performance inferior NNR for a price/performance superior NNR—while physically possible in some cases, constitutes a suboptimal allocation of resources, and always suboptimizes total economic output (GDP) and overall societal wellbeing. Technical Innovation Will Insure Sufficient Incremental NNR Supplies Myth: New technologies will enable us to discover additional NNRs and to recover greater quantities from the NNR deposits that we discover. Reality: It is true that new technologies have enabled NNR discoveries in increasingly remote and difficult to access regions; and it is true that new technologies have enabled the recovery of increasing NNR quantities from existing NNR deposits. However, because remaining NNR deposits are of continuously declining quality, technical innovation is subject to diminishing marginal investment returns—i.e., after some point, each incremental unit of technology investment yields continuously smaller quantities of economically viable NNRs—initially in individual deposits, then in nations, and ultimately globally. So despite continuous technical innovation, technology must always play catch-up to declining NNR quality; and technology inevitably falls further behind. That we must resort to increasingly complex and expensive “just-in-time” technologies to discover, extract, process, and provision sufficient supplies of dwindling “low ROI” NNRs—the only remaining NNRs—is the most telling evidence of increasing NNR scarcity. Unfortunately, perpetuating our industrial lifestyle paradigm requires ever-increasing quantities of “high ROI” NNRs. Note too that while technology can enable us to discover additional NNRs, recover additional NNR quantities from existing deposits, conserve NNRs, and use NNRs more efficiently; it cannot create additional NNRs. Technology is limited both in terms of its marginal effectiveness and its absolute effectiveness. I'm beginning to wonder when you are going to get to the realization that constant growth will eventually paint the modern industrial globalized economies into a corner that can't be wiggled out of! The problem begins before resources are extracted, and new products are designed and built, and begins with the assumption that there will always be more available. As long as we live in a finite world that we cannot escape from this is a total absurdity. And the question I started asking in the last year or two, is what role has humanism and expectation of unending progress played in creating the mess the world finds itself in now! When it comes to dealing with the supernatural, atheists who follow naturalistic thinking may think they are completely rational and their worldview is untainted with irrational expectations.....but, atheists who either deny we are in a global crisis, or minimize it as a temporary phase that we will invent our way out of, are just as delusional as anyone standing on their roofs waiting for the end times to come.

I have posted lots of evidence on other threads where I raised these issues in the usual debates about environmental policies, and that's not the specific topic here. Nevertheless, I can't help notice that you have presented no evidence, and trying to extrapolate present trends into the future has to take resource declines into consideration. The basic fallacy of modern capitalist economic theory...whether we're talking liberal theories or the ones from the right, is that they have made land and resources a collection of commodities to be exploited for development, rather than using the commonsense approach that guided most of humanity for thousands of years -- that nature is the real economy...the natural economy, that makes every human desire possible. If present trends are just based on past performance, they are essentially worthless. And that goes for other trend analysis that is done from narrow lines of evidence, such as the UN-sponsored population report that projects a world population of 9.5 billion in 2050, and ignores the necessary food supply trend evidence from another UN organization - the FAO. Or the recent projections of 6 degrees warming by the end of this century. That may occur, but it's necessary to point out that those trends are based on continued growth in carbon fuel use, which is already being constrained by the exhaustion of the world's major oil fields, and the costs of getting oil from unconventional sources. It may happen....but, a better analysis would incorporate how likely future economic growth is actually going to be possible. I posted stuff from a book I have by a resource analyst named Christopher Clugston, who makes the point that it's not just oil -- it's at least 63 of 89 essential non-renewable natural resources that are past peak availability, so prices are essentially driven by demand for available supplies. And, half the book is an index of each resource stats from USGS and other sources. If you haven't noticed the trend of resource prices climbing every time there is an increase in GDP, and falling again during recessions, you haven't been paying attention over the last 10 years!

There should be a subforum for humour....because I think that's where a story like this would be best located: From Alternet "Can demons engage in sexual behaviors with humans?" the magazine asks. Why yes, they can! At least according to the article's primary source, a former stripper-turned-ministry leader named Contessa Adams. Adams shares her decades-long struggle with demon sex, sparing no horrible, sexy detail: These spiritual rapists, as Adams describes them in her book, Consequences, often prey on people by performing sexual acts through nightmares and erotic dreams. Some people become so dependent upon these demonic experiences that they actually look forward to them. "Anybody that has been attacked by them will tell you ... they're worried [that] they could not find that pleasure with mortal people," says Adams, who claims she was once possessed by sexual demons. The two most identifiable sexual demons are the incubus, which is a male sexual demon that traditionally assaults women, and the succubus, which is a female sexual demon that assaults men. Sometimes they also lure people into homosexual behavior. Adams says the succubus spirit that used to attack her confused her so much that she contemplated becoming a lesbian. At the Charisma Magazine website, where the article was posted, I was surprised that a number of responses were anything but approving. The 2nd post stood out in particular, and makes an important point about how this ridiculous idea could...and likely has already caused a lot of harm: Katherine Scott Amundsen • 2 days ago I agree. And if people feel they are being "raped by demons" the first thing that came to my mind was "body memories".... so not only does it insult and utterly minimize abuse, but it can cover-up abuse of those who are suffering through their trauma via flashbacks.... This article is disgusting.

The factory owner was only concerned about short term profits, and obviously proceeded from the standpoint of dealing with a crisis when it happens, and trying to minimize that crisis. This is no different than how the owner of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company dealt with the fire at his factory back in 1911. He had his managers do what they could afterwards to minimize their culpability; he went to the owners of the New York newspapers to try to offer deals to minimize their coverage of the Fire; and naturally, he hired the best damn lawyers he could find and escaped criminal charges...which could have even included a death sentence at the time, and only had to pay a fine. A more recent example of this behaviour comes out of what we have learned since the BP-Global Horizon Disaster. BP execs were only focused on the high costs of drilling more than a mile under the sea floor, and hurried the transition to getting that well into the production phase - and getting that expensive drilling platform out of there and to a new location. When you look at the way BP loaded and rolled the dice....even hurrying Haliburton's cementing operation at the wellhead...we are once again left with the conclusion that our capitalist economic system has made the greediest psychopaths the "cream" that rises to the top! These are the men (it's almost exclusively men) who are willing to take the greatest risks for quarterly profits, and they care nothing about their employees, environmental consequences, or any consequences for that matter! And, if suppliers to major American retailers and electronics and apparel companies are psychopaths, what does that say about the companies like Walmart and Apple, who reward suppliers solely on the basis of cost, and only maintain a CYA "inspection" process to pretend like they care about issues like safety standards and the welfare of workers in these factories. As soon as a major disaster like this that kills more than a hundred people, or there is a workplace riot against the company - like at Foxcomm, then the facade falls, and shows the world what globalization is really all about. And speaking of such, information about how these factories operate does get out...even if mainstream media here have no interest in covering the story: -Gross and Illegal Sweatshop Conditions- Below-subsistence wages: some of the lowest wages in the world: - Helpers earn just 18 cents an hour, $8.44 a week, working 48 regular hours each week. - Junior sewing operators earn 21 to 22 cents an hour, $9.85 to $10.69 a week. - Senior sewing operators earn 23 to 26 cents an hour, just $11.26 to $12.66 a week for the regular 48-hour work week. Physical abuse: It is not uncommon for supervisors to curse and even slap and punch workers, including young women, for making a mistake at work or for taking too long in the bathroom. Workers report that the toilets are filthy. All overtime is strictly obligatory: Workers who object or cannot remain for obligatory overtime are terminated. For the last three months, it has been mandatory for the workers to toil two Fridays each month—supposedly their weekly holiday. The workers are forced to work a nine-hour shift, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on their weekly holiday. The workers receive just two days off each month. They routinely work 72 to 81 hours a week! Women are routinely denied their legal right to maternity leave. Workers who arrive late to work three times are immediately fired. There is no daycare center at the Tazreen Fashion factory. Sick leave is not allowed. Workers are routinely cheated of their legal overtime wages. The standard work shift is 12 hours, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. with one hour off for lunch. It is obligatory for the workers to toil three overtime hours each weekday on top of the standard eight-hour work shift. The workers are routinely cheated of their legal overtime wages. Just one hour of overtime each day is paid correctly, at a 100 percent premium (double time), while the other two hours are paid as straight time. For example a junior sewing operator earning 22 cents an hour should earn 44 cents an hour for overtime work. But of the three hours of daily overtime, just one is paid correctly, at 44 cents an hour, while the other two overtime hours are illegally paid as straight time, at just 22 cents an hour. Essentially, the workers are being cheated of 33 percent of their legal overtime wages! Tazreen Fashion Ltd had a permit to construct a three-story factory, but instead, the company built an illegal, nine-story building. Apparently no one in government challenged this. There were not enough fire extinguishers to control even a small fire, let alone the major flames that engulfed the workers. http://www.globallabourrights.org/alerts?id=0401

Let me know when you actually have something to say! FWIW Malthus wasn't proven wrong about his basic contention that populations will grow exponentially beyond the capacity of their available food supplies. Malthus made his observations over 200 years ago, before emigration and colonization relieved the overpopulation crisis in England and the rest of Europe....and, before plantations set up in those colonies, started sending substantial quantities of food back to the Empire. The subsequent industrialization....especially the industrialization of agriculture responsible for most of the gains made during the Green Revolution of the 60's did not deny Malthus either! They only deferred his predictions...postponing the due date a little forward into the future. But, each time Malthus has been denied by increasing production, that means expanding the total human ecological footprint ever further beyond the carrying capacity of Earth's resources. We don't know where the exact limits are, where there will be no further significant withdrawals from the Earth's bank account, but, judging from recent events since the beginning of this century, it appears that we are closing in on a final day of reckoning, where there is a major crash in world food production that cannot be recovered because of habitat destruction and degradation, and billions more people on the planet than can be sustained permanently. And, once again, whether you are an atheist or not, you obviously have your worldview set up with the notion of our world being a cornucopia waiting to be harvested by expanding human ingenuity and technology. The only part where this issue of progress touches on the atheist movements and secular philosophies, is that they seem to all be tied up with this faith in human innovation....so, the real lesson is that atheists, who mostly would describe themselves as skeptics and rationalists, are not rational and skeptical about everything! When it comes to having faith in spite of evidence against it, atheists by and large have the highest amount of faith in progress, while the religious...typical faith-based believers in various gods may be techno-optimists if they are your average conservative/libertarian, nationalistic Christians -- or they may fall on the opposite side of that debate and hold the traditional Christian skepticism of wealth and new inventions and ideas. Which faith is the most dangerous? Well, that actually depends on the circumstances! Because I would say our reckless embrace of every new technology and business innovation is the single greatest cause of the present crisis facing the human race.

Can we have a process that tries to evaluate the repercussions of building the bomb or other technologies? I would say that if we look at the long game, technologies developed to extract more carbon fuels from the ground have been a greater threat to life on Earth than the N-Bomb. I know that technology critics - Michael and Joyce Huesemann, are also critics of The Enlightenment (this is the part where this issue dovetails with the discussion of atheism and secular humanism), because it wasn't until Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon started viewing the future as having a capacity for unlimited progress, that we started down the road of viewing all change and innovation as a good. Before that, new ideas were viewed with skepticism, and that included new inventions as well. Well, now we've invented and innovated our way into living a comfortable life (for some of us) and have lots of inventions, but we have spent most of the planetary capital to do it! Among the various branches of atheistic philosophy that I come across -- whether liberal, libertarian or conservative, I don't find many....possibly not even a single one, who is not hinged at the hip to the notion of progress. The growth of secularism and decline of religion is usually presented from a worldview that, aside from a few hiccups, progress will continue on and we will escape the restrictions of this planet before we have to worry about using it up.

No, they're not....not if we're looking at the longer term timescale of the human race. The unequivocal embrace of new technology did not begin until the Enlightenment, when a linear interpretation of history also started - that man emerges from a primitive, beast-like past to an ever brighter future, thanks to the promise of turning every and any idea into building of new inventions to enable the extraction of greater and greater amounts of the Earth's resources.....can you see where this is going? Unfortunately, not enough techno-optimists do! Instead, they somehow combine the awareness of living in a finite world with the expectation that human innovation and the possibility of substituting burned out resources can keep the joyride going indefinitely into the future no matter how many billions of people are living on the planet! Well, that's at least what the most absurd and pollyanish techno-optimists like Julian Simon and Tom Friedman believe. And that belief is very popular, and lucrative for its authors because it's a dream that allows present trends to just continue on....but, that dream is turning into a nightmare right now, at this minute, because if you really want to know why world economies are stagnating and unable to spur real economic growth, you have to delve below the surface of politics and economic theory, and look at what's happening as natural resources become inelastic in supply, and unable to meet demands for continued growth. You might want to check in with Stephen Hawking on that one! Or, since environmental sciences and biology are not his specialty, take an honest look at what those pessimists like Paleontologist Peter D. Ward have to say about our species's future prospects. A paleontologist who studies and tries to understand past extinctions is a good place to start, as the first lesson to be learned is that most extinctions are not sudden, dramatic wipeouts (not even the dinosaurs disappeared all at once), instead, numbers of animals go into a death spiral of decline....as many species of animals are doing today also. It's difficult to tell exactly where a species has past a population bottleneck, where lack of genetic diversity prevents those remaining from making a comeback. If we take an honest look at the numbers: the size of today's world population, the increasing size of our ecological footprint, the shrinking of agricultural zones, the warming of planet Earth, which will lead to a hot world with an uninhabitable zone in the Tropics, a 270 foot rise in sea levels, and no ice left at either pole sometime in the next century -- something unseen since the Eocene Optimum. And, we put the data together with the realization that there are only a few places left on Earth like the Arctic, which may still have an abundance of the NNR's necessary to keep building machines and provide energy for whatever is left in a hundred years or so, it's not doom and gloom to predict the likelihood that our species is on course for a self-inflicted extinction. Self-inflicted because it has been our inventions of the last few centuries that have allowed us to grow and foul our environment to the point where it will likely seal the fate of future generations. It's just a realistic assessment of what the future holds for the human race, and those who claim that it's irrational and unfounded, are the ones who just want to live in denial and keep doing what they are doing now....because, as we can already see with the latest bullshit round of climate summit talks in Doha, there is not enough commitment even now to prioritize what is necessary, rather than what is the minimum that can be done and keep our present economic system functioning.

The way the economy is going, the video could be about home furnishings for young people moving away from home! The band name rung a bell with me, and then I remembered why -- they could only afford to buy one guitar, so they all had to learn how to play it with five band members:

I like Lissie! I'll have to see what else she's done. I want to go back in time....about 30 years ago, when I was still up on all the new music. One that I really connected with...while almost nobody else I knew did was Big Country. They suffered a fate worse than being ignored and living in obscurity with a core fan base -- instead, one of the first songs they wrote "In A Big Country" became a ridiculously overplayed hit from that debut album...and almost nothing else they ever did got played on this side of the Pond! I always considered the closing track (Porrohman)of their debut album - The Crossing, to be their best work. I'm a fan of guitar work, and this song shows one of the best blends of double lead guitars of any guitar band around. And, as usual, I prefer concert videos....I'm not sure if one of those horrible music videos was ever made for this song anyway.....regardless, here's Big Country, in their prime, Live at The Barrowlands in 1983:

I hope I never have to answer that question! Tell me again how it was science, rather than the obvious reason - religious and ethnic hatred of an outsider group, which led to the Holocaust. As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki...different story! I don't think it is proper to blame science and scientific inquiry for Truman's decisions to test them out and see what would happen. Many of the scientists who cooperated with the Manhattan Project, like Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, were conflicted about using their knowledge of the energy potential that could be unleashed by the strong nuclear force in the form of a weapon of destruction. They understood that they could build the Bomb, but weren't sure whether it was right to build the Bomb! This shows that evil comes from scientific discovery only when it is developed in the form of new technologies. But besides the Bomb, why hasn't our society tried to put technology under scrutiny to determine whether it's overall benefits are greater than potential harms presented by building and applying the new inventions? The only group I am aware of who has taken a skeptical approach to technology are the Amish. From what little I understand of their beliefs, it's a mistake to go with the common assumption that they are misfits caught in a timewarp of the 18th century! I don't have it front of me right now, but I have heard that they have a three step process for analyzing new inventions or ways of doing things, and any new invention adopted has to pass this examination. So, the Amish would be among the tiny minority who are skeptical about technology, while the rest of the world -- whether they are atheists or fundamentalists of varying stripes, fall in the category of techno-optimists, who believe technology is either neutral or virtuous, and even where new technologies create obvious problems, instead of scrapping them, the solution is to just create counter-technologies to deal with the symptoms....just like in modern medicine! And our collective worship of technological progress explains a lot, possibly even most of the reason why the human race is standing at the brink of extinction today.

This was an obvious bullshit alibi that came right from the Prime Minister of Bangladesh on the day after. And there is still no evidence of arson, and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference anyway, since the reason why more than 110 people died in that fire was because the building was a firetrap -- from what we are learning, bears an uncanny resemblance to the inquest into the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911: overcrowded floorspace areas, aisles that were too narrow in case of emergency, piles of flammable materials close by, doors and windows kept locked by security - supposedly to prevent theft....it looks like deja vu all over again, precisely because this is how a labour-intensive factory job like making clothing is done when the owners of capital have complete freedom to chase profits. So, your happy with the race to bottom for wages! This has had obvious impacts on the quality of life over here. I'll bet that if we do a complete analysis, the decline in the adjusted retail cost of clothing is much less than the decline in the cost of manufacturing...as Walmart, Tommy Hilfiger, and an assortment of major retailers have continually forced their suppliers to drop prices, by packing up and moving their manufacturing operations to where they can be done cheapest. Walmart even has a division who's task is to assist suppliers with all of the paperwork and logistics necessary for closing factories here or wherever, and moving them to places like Bangladesh. It wasn't that many years ago when there were still textile manufacturers in Canada. It wasn't a very profitable industry, even during Trudeau years, when the Government raised import tariffs on clothing to protect local manufacturers. My two older brothers both got their first jobs with a company that made work gloves and canvas awnings and tents. Nobody, except for a few managers, made much more than minimum wage, but the pay and working conditions were a damn sight better than what's happening now with the miracle of globalization and phony 'free trade' deals! It's a whole nother argument about whether getting on the lowest rung of the globalization game has been any real benefit to third world countries like Bangladesh. Mexicans generally agree that they did not benefit from NAFTA, and just as in Bangladesh, China, India and other so-called emerging markets, a small ruling class are the ones who cash in, and take a modest sized middle class along for the ride who are needed to manage things. But, the vast majority of the poor, who are forced off their land, to move into cities looking for work in sweatshops, can anyone seriously believe that their lives are any better today than they were when they were on the land?

As our advocate for gangster capitalism, I guess he takes any condemnation of the use of sweatshop labour as a personal attack.

Good for you! Buying loads of crap for Christmas presents is one of the worst features of modern society. But, I'll admit that - since I buy gift cards (but not Walmart ones), I am making my own contributions to wasteful spending.

The Navy would have had a pretty damn big carbon footprint if they were diesel-powered! And we know that the hydrocarbon economy is going to kill us...especially as it is combined with an economic system that depends on increasing growth and increasing production. And there has been a total lack of honesty about how to do one without the other -- ending the hydrocarbon economy can't happen without addressing the way the world economy is structured. Just building windmills and solar panels as alternatives is an exercise in futility. We are either willing to make the changes to save the future, or we're not!

That would be fine if there was nobody already living there, and poor, itinerate locals didn't have to be swindled off their land, first in the land-grabs where absentee landowners connected with the Ottoman Empire collected the money in land purchases, and later, most of the those who refused or were reluctant to leave were just forced off their land....let's just say that I find the typical Zionist alibi - they left voluntarily - to be totally ludicrous. Another bone of contention that has been rarely mentioned, is that the locals may have been backward, but they did not want their lives to change; so even though many of the young, idealistic, educated Zionists coming from Europe may have had good intentions to bring them into the 20th century -- Palestine was mostly populated by people who didn't want what western culture offered! Another point for historians to play with is a strongly supported (but not absolutely proven) claim that Lord Balfour promised Palestine to two different groups of people after WWI -- the Jews and an independent state for the Arab locals. It's easy to see how that wartime strategy could set in motion a never-ending conflict.