Major Electronics Magazine Picks Up On Polywell

[MirariNefas]

There's plenty of papers analyzing that subject. My understanding of it is that when you evolve alongside a creature, it evolves with you. That is, successive generations of ever smarter hominids puts evolutionary pressure on the surrounding fauna at a slow rate. This leads to fauna developing which are either harder to kill, or less rewarding to kill for those hominids.

Eventually, the nth generation of evolved superpredator hominid leaves the continent and heads off to strange new lands, where they find big giant stupid dodos which have never had to deal with a hominid before. Easy lunch, and they're wiped out too quickly to evolve in response.

As a further thoughts in that line, the concept is seen elsewhere. When colonizers spread new pathogens to a people and it decimates them, why didn't that pathogen kill the explorers in the first place? Because their population has been growing and incubating with the disease historically. It's also exactly what happens with invasive species - they're introduced to an environment where the local flora and fauna haven't had a chance to evolve alongside them.

In that context, I think it's a little ridiculous to deny the role of hunter-gatherers in causing extinctions. Of course they caused extinctions, just like any other invasive species that spreads around the world.

[alexjrgreen]

I think it's a little ridiculous to deny the role of hunter-gatherers in causing extinctions. Of course they caused extinctions, just like any other invasive species that spreads around the world.

I don't know of any cases where hunter gatherers have been the main cause of an extinction. In Australia and North America they added to existing environmental stress, so may be partly responsible.

Extinctions in modern times, though, are very common. The spread of agriculture displaces animals from their natural habitat and hunting for trophies rather than food wipes out whole populations.

[Betruger]

Were hunter gatherer populations not so small as to skew such a comparison with modern industry?

[WillKell]

I believe there really are no real examples in history that says we are not sustainable.

There are just points at which we call ourselves something else.

The word here is "sustainable"... Dodo's were sustainable in their close environment (system). Ours is the entire planet and soon to be others.

Has anyone read Julian Lincoln Simon's "The Ultimate Resource II".

We have always hit points where it was over and we simply changed.

Does anybody remember the flint shortages? Or Devon's book that the end of the British industrial revelution had come because they were running out of coal. It was all over as fast as it started.

No, I see improvement every year in mans condition.

Anyone notice the falling populations in the developed world.

My bet is with Julian Lincoln Simon.

Saludos
Will

P.S. Did anyone read that Ray Kruzwell book: The Singularity is Near?

I need a spell check on this thing

[MSimon]

Were hunter gatherer populations not so small as to skew such a comparison with modern industry?

Industry is mindful of resources. It is one of the reasons we have access to more oil than ever before. The price is higher though.

Now if the politicians would just get out of the way.

[cuddihy]

Don't let the politico-economists force you to live like battery-chickens in the same-old most efficient houses, driving to the same-old 'good-for-the-economy' jobs in you 'most efficient cars ever' (which would therefore theoretically mean we all drive the same one, as one single design will ultimately prove to be the best, and same with the house) eating standardised food that has the least impact (as that'd all be the same aswell, seeing as wheat/barley is the most efficient, I guess you'll all be eating gruel all the time).

It's already happening. It's your duty as thinking humans to resist and to demand change. You now have the means to do that without blood-shed, through information and technology (possibly for the first time ever!). DON'T COCK IT UP, GUYS!!! WORK IT. MAKE IT HAPPEN! You're on a trajectory back into the middle ages at the moment - maybe that trajectory won't even stop there but take you back to 'hunter-gatherers'.

Jeez. Messianic complex much, Tyler Durden?

There's a pascal's wager that applies to this situation: Let's say, for the sake of Art Bell argument, that you're right about the actual intrinsic value of money. What benefit would I have to acting as though money meant what you say it does as opposed to what the other 99.9999% of humanity says it is (that is, a direct measure of relative value that is easily and widely tradeable?)

Is there some benefit to this secret knowledge of the Real Value of Money? Or is it just a benefit as a psychic palliative in the manner of gnosticism?

[MirariNefas]

I think it's a little ridiculous to deny the role of hunter-gatherers in causing extinctions. Of course they caused extinctions, just like any other invasive species that spreads around the world.

I don't know of any cases where hunter gatherers have been the main cause of an extinction. In Australia and North America they added to existing environmental stress, so may be partly responsible.

Climate went through shifts many times before. Coincidence that the shift following human introduction was when most of the megafauna died off? No.

Partly responsible, added stress, call it what you will. End result is the same. Not that I'm judging, mind you. This is what happens with all invasive species. Eventually, the surrounding environment incorporates the new player into the biosphere. Those hunter-gatherers eventually found a new equilibrium with their environment, and given enough time the same level of diversity would have returned.

[chrismb]

Is there some benefit to this secret knowledge of the Real Value of Money? Or is it just a benefit as a psychic palliative in the manner of gnosticism?

Depends if you 'support' ITER or not (by way of example, and with 'support' based on its own technical merits). My thesis is not that we can make some sudden, immediate miraculous change, as you seem to imply I say, but that we adopt a culture of 'can do' support for technology as the main driver, NOT that we support a 'must do what the markets tell us'* as the driver. I'm advocating a change of attitude, not a change of society. The latter will follow the former.

*(or support politicians who think like that)

[alexjrgreen]

Were hunter gatherer populations not so small as to skew such a comparison with modern industry?

Seven billion humans obviously have a bigger impact on the world than a few thousand. We use more resources than we used to...

[Betruger]

LHC probably would have been up and running if it weren't for the idiot that left a beer bottle in the test chamber. Maybe they have an eco-terrorist on their staff. Some disgruntled janitor. Maybe that's why the recent failure happened.

Seriously? A stray beer bottle is what broke the LHC? I don't believe it..

[MSimon]

Again, it's a question of cost.

HVDC would probably be the best choice, but it has some disadvantages in terms of reliability and availability.

A 20GW plant is a little scary anyway. These giant engineering projects like LHC have so many potential failure points.

What about the cost of not doing it? Compounded with scarcer resources making it more expensive? Compounded with inflation over the past 20-30 years? Rule of 72.. 72/interest rate = cost doubling in years.

If the US can burn a trillion dollars on a war, why not string an infrastructure of HVDC lines. Superconducting ones needed for the electric car industry that we are 25 years behind schedule. Perhaps justify a laser defense grid for rogue state missiles and airline hijackings.

(On a side note, I still can't believe they don't have NYC ringed with SAM sites or Patriot batteries. That we know of.. :roll: )

LHC probably would have been up and running if it weren't for the idiot that left a beer bottle in the test chamber. Maybe they have an eco-terrorist on their staff. Some disgruntled janitor. Maybe that's why the recent failure happened.

Resources are not getting scarcer - see Julian Simon.

Please do a cost out of the HVDC system you plan. i.e. Miles total. Dollars per mile. number of substations. MW per substation. cost per MW of substations. BOE numbers are fine.

I think it will come in well above a trillion (10s of trillions is more like it)

You might also want to do something on the cost per MWh of current sources and proposed replacement sources. Then explain (if the sources are intermittent) you plan for supplying electricity when your intermittent sources do not produce. i.e. storage, back up generators etc.

[Tom Ligon]

I don't know about the beer bottle, but while at EMC2 we needed to have an ion pump overhauled by a local vacuum outfit. The owner described to me an episode in which a large chamber with one whole wall composed of the same ion pump element simply refused to pump down to the required level after several months of trying. They finally gave up and opened the chamber, and found a brown bag containing the dryest bologna sandwich anyone could recall seeing.

That was about the time I decided we needed a residual gas analyzer on the system. I figured outgassing bologna and mayonaise would have a distinctly different signature than water vapor and pump oil.

[David_Jay]

Tom:

I don't believe your story - sounds like a lot of baloney to me

[Chuck Connors]

And I commend Tom for correcting thread drift....we are definately back on a firmer scientific footing.

It's run the full gamut- from Science and Simon's mug to hunters and gatherers.