Jihad needs scientists

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:42:33 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

snip
And a *few* ppl are now waking up to the fact that service industries
don't
invent things !

When more than a few people wake up to this, I will be happier.

The problem driving the change in the us towards service and away from
knowing how to design and make things is fundamental and won't go away
with some realization. People already realize it.

The problem is capsulized in the experiences of a certain company I
was involved with as a contractor, back in the 1980s. They were
developing the very first rewritable CDROM -- before they existed, in
fact. Ph.D. polymer chemists and optical physicists and various other
specialties, including engineers, were working out all the details
required to make practical what we now take for granted.

From my perspective, they had everything worked out very well. In
fact, they were getting close enough to a product. There was one
remaining fundamental problem and that was the time it took to erase.
They knew they had to improve that time substantially. But they had
several lines to follow there that worked in the lab and no one
doubted they would resolve it for manufacturability. No one I met
there, anyway. It would take a year, perhaps less, to work out a real
solution. (At that time, by the way, the CD plastic plates were about
a penny each in large quantities and the polymer layers added another
5 cents, or so.) It turns out that the method used in pratical
writable CDs _would be_ their technique, and they had a number of key
patents on it.

However, the investors had already pumped in a lot of money and they
were already 3 years deep into the project, and were asking for
another year or so to finalize. Early expectations given to them by
the PhD types had been more like 2-2.5 years "max" and the investors
decided to abort the project rather than go for another year and see.

They fired everyone except one person, someone technical enough to
understand their patents and to help them sell them and also shop
around for other technical companies' products. They decided not to
be a manufacturer, but instead a patent broker and a seller of others'
products.

I actually got some of my better tools from the sale of that company
when it went "out of business." A 6 1/2 digit HP multimeter, a nice
10mW HeNe Melles Griot laser, a couple of 25mW tunable Argons, and
some other nice optical tools and stuff. (When they did a little
internal auction of sorts.)

Part of this is that few are honestly focused on long term, anymore.
They cannot well afford to be. Too many things change too quickly.
The high and fluctuating interest rates of the late 1970's forced a
lot of companies to shorten up their focus a lot and they haven't had
reason to change back, since then. Everything is about the here and
now and very little looks to the long term (which can be anything more
than a year or two, depending on area, it seems like.) Certainly,
I've not seen any "real" business planning going past 5 years and I
hear people laughing in the hallways about even that much.

Service businesses are much more "aligned" with this short term
mentality. R&D is very hard to come by and building up manufacturing
knowledge and skill takes time and often substantial capital assets.
Having investors with this kind of long term approach is like finding
hens' teeth. Rare.

Now, I'm talking about the US so far. Worldwide, there is still a
serious need for products and products will be made and companies will
develop them. But the equilibrium point within the US has shifted
well over into the service sector while I've been an observer and, for
the US, I don't think that is healthy.

I think people already know the local problems. The question is,
"What can we do about it?" How to effect a change within the US, for
example, that will encourage investment in product development
knowledge instead of a shift towards service here? (That is, of
course, if we can decide it's worth keeping the skills.)

Jon

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:01:16 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

T Wake wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote
On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:56:56 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

One thing I find odd, is that you don't think DNA/RNA mutation and
evolution
is amazing and wonderful in itself. Isn't it amazing how four bases can
produce such variety?

The four bases are a programming language. The *programs* and their
high-level structure will turn out to be astonishing in their own
right.

It is already astonishing that ACGT can spell out a human and a fruit fly.
The analogy of a programming language may be accurate, and is certainly
attractive, but answers nothing.

But how the heck do individual cells know what to turn into ?

Chemical signals in their local environment. For example, we have a
close chemical analog in humans to spiders, I remember reading about,
that leads/signals the direction of development of our spinal column
and other nervous tissue.

Chemicals are the means by which cells communicate with each other, so
to speak, or trigger differentiation.

But I'm ignorant about the details. So I'll stop here.

Jon

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:26:44 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:45379C79.FAA049BF@earthlink.net...
Lloyd Parker wrote:

In article <45376EAA.AF2F3DBB@earthlink.net>,
"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:
Lloyd Parker wrote:

Why then would a designer make every life form use almost the same
DNA?
Why
have a flower have the same basic DNA as a human?


Because that designer knows his tools, and how to use them. Do you
think that a bridge should be made of plastic, because steel had been
used for cars that will cross it?

Would you design a bridge with the same basic structure as, say, a pair
of
shoes if you were starting from scratch?


We are talking building blocks. Steel is used in both, as are
synthetic materials for cushioning.


Do you think a designer should learn a whole new disciple for every
project they do? Maybe we need an infinite number of elements so we
never use the same in any two designs?



I would think an infinite god would have introduced a little variety into
his
designs.

He doesn't have to do what you want, he did what he wanted. If the
DNA wasn't similar, where would the proteins you need come from?

He could make them up any way he wanted.

This points up the problem of arguing design. We have no idea what a
designer would or would not do/use. So until we develop a theory of
such design, there is no way we can recognize such design as being
design. We wouldn't know it if it hit us in the face, right now. We
just don't have the perspective.

Jon

 

"JoeBloe" <joebloe@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote in message
news:jrlej2d7jucm71sc7juj3kufmlsk1knork@4ax.com...

Then, we started the industrial revolution.

Actually....no. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution:
"The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also concerns the
massive lead that Britain had over other countries."

The Industrial Revolution is widely acknowledged to have started in England
around the 1760s, with the start of migration of farm workers to and the
mechanization of factories--the first of which were probably the textile
mills. Watt's steam engine around 1770 was a major enabling development.

At that time, we weren't yet even a country, and certainly had little or no
industry. The IR didn't migrate to the US until sometime later in the 19th
century. DuPont set up his gunpowder factory in the early 1800s, and that
was probably one of the earliest US industrial concerns. Fascinating tour,
if you're ever in Wilmington, DE.

Interestingly, Leominster, England was a focal point for the mechanization
of the textile industry in England. That's interesting because
Leominster/Fitchburg, Massachusetts was the center of the US textile
industry from about 1850 until its decline after WWII and offshoring to the
Far East. One might assume that the coincidence was due to textile
companies moving from Leominster, England to Massachusetts and setting up
company a town named after their home in England, but that's apparently not
the case. Leominster, MA was settled, fully established and incorporated
long before the IR hit the US.

But, please, don't let a little data stand in the way of your jingoism.

Eric Lucas

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:44:11 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news0mdj29rrhlrl7g74vu9kkqsg2ib9d0lb9@4ax.com...
On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:56:56 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:


One thing I find odd, is that you don't think DNA/RNA mutation and
evolution
is amazing and wonderful in itself. Isn't it amazing how four bases can
produce such variety?

The four bases are a programming language. The *programs* and their
high-level structure will turn out to be astonishing in their own
right.

It is already astonishing that ACGT can spell out a human and a fruit fly.
The analogy of a programming language may be accurate, and is certainly
attractive, but answers nothing.

Is it fun, being dull and dogmatic all the time?

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:15:37 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
<speffSNIP@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote:

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:08:09 -0700, the renowned John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 16:08:56 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:



John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:09:14 +0100, Eeyore wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:

That's where we pretend we like the French ;-)

Sorry, Jim, but I'm not THAT good at playing pretend.

Don't worry. The French don't much like your kind of Americans either.

Graham

Heck, you can hardly get into a roadside rest area bathroom for the
crowds from the French tour busses. On our way back from Monterey, my
wife had to sit shivering at the Junipera Serra rest stop for that
very reason, waiting out a bus full of female French tourists. If you
go to the top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, the language you're most
likely to overhear is German.

Stay home! The lines at Peet's Coffee and Joseph Schmidt Chocolate are
long enough already.

The attraction of the falling dollar and rising Euro of course.

Graham

The rooms at the Inn at Spanish Bay start at about $550, and europeans
are a glut there, too. But you can sit on the deck, overlooking the
ocean, next to a cozy open-air firepit, sipping a Guinness, and the
burger and fries are excellent. If you get chilly, they'll bring you
blankets. Golf is an insane activity, but golf resorts are almost
always a great place to stay.

John

Last survey I saw showed US tourism down a modest 7% since 2000, but
globally it was up 25% over the same period.

Hmmm, then maybe I can wrangle a room at Spanish Bay. It's great
during the winter storms, when the golfers are away anyhow.

John

 

In article <1161269196.409626.307220@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>, "MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> writes:

mmeron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
In article <1161223334.040783.47000@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, "MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> writes:

mmeron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
In article <1161180088.789377.65880@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> writes:

mmeron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
In article <1161136120.854490.3840@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, "MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> writes:

mmeron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
In article <1161093618.810074.46780@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>, "MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> writes:
[....]

In those cases, the US gains nothing by calling it a war either. If
the US calls it a war, they will be called "freedom fighters" so
nothing is gained. In those cases where the US does have some control
over public opinion, what the US calls them matters. In those places,
calling them criminals is better.

You can call them "guntzetzvarthers" and it still won't matter. It is
not what you call them but what means you employ that's the issue.

I disagree. I still believe that the US does have some influence by
means of what words it chooses to use. Using the word "war" is a
mistake in this case.

Feel free to believe what you wish, but don't expect me to share your
beliefs.

I don't see why not. Do you believe that the US has no influence or do
you believe that the US's influence is best used by calling it a war?

The US has lots of influence in some places, some influence in other

ones, close to zero in yet other ones. Observe the world around you.
How much did the US influence achieve with North Korea or Iran, so
far? How much of an effect did it have on the ongoing slaughter in
Darfur? If it is the real world you want to talk about, empirical
data from the real world needs to be considered.

The means that have worked so far have been the police actions not the
miltiary ones. It was the British police that stopped the latest group
trying to use aircraft as weapons. It was a customs officer that
uncovered the millenium. After the first bombing of the world trade
center the police tracked down and arrested a whole bunch of folks. So
far, I've seen little or no evidence that the miltiary means has had
any net result.

Police actions are important, as defensive measures. They're
necessary but, in this case, far from sufficient.

Since they are the only thing that works, we had better make them
sufficient. The Afghanistan situation is the only case where there
could be a war. Of course that situation has been allowed to slip
back.

Afghanistan is not the core of the problem, it was just an accidental

temporary base. Needed to be taken out, of course, but not a goal in
itself. The core resides in the Arab world itself.

Nowhere else has military actions helped, nor do I believe they ever
could help. The war in Iraq isn't really part of the "war on terror"
but it has made things much worse.

It is very much part of the war, whether you acknowledge it or not.

[....]
In the US there is a law called the RICO statute. I assume that most
other countries have a law like this too.

You assume a lot.

Yes I do. Am I wrong on this. Doesn't Italy (for example) have a law
like this?

Some countries do, many don't, and since a law of this nature is very
vague, it'll be used (or not used) based on political contingencies.

This is always a problem with laws. We also have the same sorts of
problems with military actions. Other countries will help, hinder or
stand aside depending on internal politics.

Certainly.

[....]
requirement which is fine for dealing with individuals and small
groups, but cannot be satisfied when dealing with global ideological
movement.

I don't see why not. If it is a world wide movement with many people
involved, there should be even better evidence than if there are just a
few people. The more people in a conspiracy the more likely it is
someone will talk.

So he'll talk, so what. So you'll get few low level operatives
convicted (assuming you can find them in the first place). Will do
very little good.

If you throw all the operatives in jail and cut off the money supply it
will do a lot of good.

Sure. And if you won't it won't. There is little reason to think
that you're catching more than a small fraction of the operatives and
cutting off more than a small fraction of the money supply.

When the millenium plot was unraveled, a fairly large number of people
were arrested tried and convicted.

Oh, please. Fairly large? Like "few dozen". These are all drops in
a bucket.

If you catch just one it does only a little
good. If you send hundreds of thousands of troops into battle but fail
to catch or kill their leaders it also does very little good or perhaps
it does harm. If the bad guys survive an attempt on their life, it
increases their credibility.

I'm glad you start to see why going personally after Bin Laden, in a
way which had far from overwhelming chance of success, was not a very
bright idea.

No, I see no such thing. The US should have gone after Bin Laden. The
US had him at Tora Bora.
He was surrounded but for some reason the US backed away. This was a
major mistake. Bill Clinton had taken his best shot at the tail end of
his presidency.

You just said in the above "If the bad guys survive an attempt on
their life, it increases their credibility." Apparently you don't
read what you say. Said "best shot" had so many holes in it from
inception through execution that it did more harm than good.

GWB let up on the pressure then. From the moment the
US had proof that OBL did the Cole, the hunt should have been on.

It was pretty well known who is behind it within few days of the

bombing. Please cut out the nonsense, I've no time for this.

[...]
The net is full of people who are absolutely convinced that they're
100% correct in absolutely everything they ever said and who,
moreover, just know that everybody else will agree with them if
they'll just stop and think about it Take a number and wait in
line.

Oh look! My ticket says number 314159 and they are now serving 271828
so I don't have long to wait. When they get to me all the worlds
problems will be solved.

Good, let me know then

Criminal investigation is aimed at individuals and
uses precise but limited tools. It is conducted under conditions
which severely limit what can and cannot be done (as it should be,
under the circumstances).

... and I say this is exactly the only way to defeat the terrorists.

Didn't seem to work in any place it was tried, except against small
and isolated groups.

A concentrated police action against Al Queda hasn't really been tried
yet. In the US the Mafai was defeated by police activity. It was an
organization of some considerable size and ceertainly not a small
isolated group.

Was samll enoug and isolated enough and operating over a limited
territory. Take an loose organization with tens of thousands of people
being involved over an unbounded territory and try. Good luck. How
much progress has been made in the war on drugs, so far?

Going around killing people at random only makes the problem worse.

For a while, until you kill enough to get them discouraged. Read
Clausevitz about how wars end, eventually.

Unfortunately the world may not have enough people for that. I believe
that they want the US to kill a lot of innocent people. Their belief
system makes it very hard to discourage them this way.

Same was true about the Nazis and Japanese, in WWII. And, if you want
to talk about their belief systems, try to read about the city of Hama
in Syria, about what happened there under the rule of the previous
Syrian dictator, Assad (the father of the current one) and what were
the results. Again, real world empirical data.

War is aimed at large entities and uses
blunt tools with few apriori limits on what can and cannot be done.
War means dirtying your hands (something you seem averse to) and,
unfortunately, lots of collateral damage.

No, I'm not worried about the dirty hands. I'm worried about the fact
that that route leads to a loss. Unless you are willing to turn a
large fraction of the world into slag, you can't defeat the terrorists
with the means of war.

Once they've a large support base, the only way to defeat them is to
discourage the base.

Unfortunately, the US isn't doing much if anything that is discouraging
their base. Since Afghanistan, I would say that the US has actually
done nothing at all. Saudi Arabia is where the biggest support has come
from. The behind the scenes activities between the Bush family and the
royal family are not known to us but if they had been effective,
chances are word would have leaked.

Or, not. Info doesn't leak out easily, in Arab countries. That ain't
the State department. And, Saudi Arabia is a very special case. Do
you understand why?

The likely result of actions adn the risks need to be assessed.
Calling it a war makes things worse so lets stop doing that. What I
personally call it doesn't matter much but what the US refers to it as
matters a great deal.

I trust you know that we're in total disagreement here.

Yes I know you disagree. Since I know that I am 100%, absolutely,
totally correct, I must assume that you are simply insane.

I'm beginning to reach the conclusion that you're a waste of time.

Though, unlike some others here, you may be redeemable if you'll
bother to inform yourself about the world. Try to do it.

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"

 

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:0fjfj2tam9m1ct80c6cou2o3fhnpibsclk@4ax.com...

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:42:33 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

snip
And a *few* ppl are now waking up to the fact that service industries
don't
invent things !

When more than a few people wake up to this, I will be happier.

The problem driving the change in the us towards service and away from
knowing how to design and make things is fundamental and won't go away
with some realization. People already realize it.

And it's been going on for at least half a century--probably since the end
of WWII (the advent of McDonald's may be some sort of watershed here,
actually.) I remember my dad, who worked in the electronics industry,
carping about it in the late 60s...and that was back when US industry was in
general still strong and US-based. I think he would be appalled, but not
surprised, if he were still alive today. I don't think many people "got it"
back then, but it seems like a few more are beginning to, now.

Eric Lucas

 

[Daniel Mandic]

John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:22:57 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

You're a bunch of meanies.

Oh there, there. Have a chocolate and don't cry.

John

Xocolatl? Or the African version (traded/exchanged with Kokain,
~3-7000Y before Christi)?



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:39:36 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:0fjfj2tam9m1ct80c6cou2o3fhnpibsclk@4ax.com...
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:42:33 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

snip
And a *few* ppl are now waking up to the fact that service industries
don't
invent things !

When more than a few people wake up to this, I will be happier.

The problem driving the change in the us towards service and away from
knowing how to design and make things is fundamental and won't go away
with some realization. People already realize it.

And it's been going on for at least half a century--probably since the end
of WWII (the advent of McDonald's may be some sort of watershed here,
actually.) I remember my dad, who worked in the electronics industry,
carping about it in the late 60s...and that was back when US industry was in
general still strong and US-based. I think he would be appalled, but not
surprised, if he were still alive today. I don't think many people "got it"
back then, but it seems like a few more are beginning to, now.

It's a natural. As populations increase, their labor value relative
to materials decline. And exploitation of resources similarly works
to raise the value of materials. The two effects work simultaneously.
Technology works as a negative feedback to moderate the impacts, by
reducing the costs of extraction and exploitation, reducing the costs
of discovery, and finding better ways to do more with less material.

I suspect that we are in for a transition in our lives. A few
millennia years ago, humans and all their domesticated livestocks
accounted for perhaps 0.1% of the total vertebrate biomass on land and
air on this planet. Today, that figure was just marked at about 98.5%
(see Paul MacCready, 2004.) We are pushing all the other animal life
forms off this planet.

At the same time, human populations well exceed 6 billion and are
expected to rise rapidly to about 9 billion by 2040. See:

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html

In any case, even in the US we are rapidly seeing the impacts of
growing populations and resource competition. Our system is currently
factored for maximal individual consumption (laws regarding single
family dwellings dominate across the board, preventing even parents
from living with children, unless they are granted an exception for
disability.) I suspect that is simply going to have to change for
efficiency's sake, but it's hard to say anything about when. We might
first transition into an apartment-dominated culture, first. Not
sure.

Rising influences due to anthropogenic climate modification are also
increasing pressures on resources. We already see the impacts, today.
Much more already in the pipeline.

That's the really big picture.

The over-arching effect is that the cost of tangible materials climb
faster than labor. Your time buys less raw material. Luckily for us,
technology has compensated and allowed much less to do a lot more for
us. But even with all that, we still have a growing percentage of
situations where it takes at least two workers to maintain a modest
lifestyle and one person cannot easily consider buying a home. When I
was growing up, it cost about 10% of your (tiny, in dollar figures)
income to buy a home. When I was at the age where I could consider
buying my first home, mortgage companies were already setting the
absolute limits on ratios at 28% for the secondary market products
(which account for almost every mortgage, today), so that if your home
payment exceeded that (with stringent adjustments) figure you would
NOT get a loan. Today, there are mortgage products that negatively
amortize being sold routinely, hoping that the increase in value will
exceed the growth of the loan. All bets are off. But mostly because
if they didn't do that, they wouldn't sell mortgages. A single
wage-earner can almost no longer cut it, anymore, in the US.

Globalization and the transfer of manufacturing offshore the US has
put additional pressure on the wages, too.

Education costs society a LOT OF MONEY. It is very expensive. When
older folks die, they take a lot of experience and knowledge with them
out of society. When new babies are born, they bring nothing into it.
A society maintains itself only by making sure that what is lost is
compensated by the education of its youth. And it is a treadmill,
too. You stop running so hard, you lose ground. If you want to
improve your level, you have to run harder. But it never ends. You
have to keep up some run rate, or you lose it.

We certainly cannot just become a society of consumers and expect to
keep our place for very long. We have to also be a society of makers,
of people who _know_ about things. There is no getting around the
work. (At least, not without also continuing to take over the lives
and resources of others.)

And even with all that, the population rises, the pressures on
resources rise, etc. It's not going to get any easier.

On June 7th, 1966, in Cape Town, South Africa, Bob Kennedy said,

"There is a Chinese curse which says,
'May he live in interesting times.'
"

It will be an interesting time, these next 30 years.

Jon

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Lloyd Parker wrote:

I would think an infinite god would have introduced a little variety
into his designs.

Hi Lloyd!


Infinite we are.... God is One. Unimaginable with a human brain.

you can catch a glimpse but you cannot step the other foot...



Maybe God is Time itself. That would make himher a higher form of life,
indeed .



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:46tfj2po6543lhhatnu10q0o2t72bac2t4@4ax.com...

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 21:39:36 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

And it's been going on for at least half a century--probably since the end
of WWII (the advent of McDonald's may be some sort of watershed here,
actually.) I remember my dad, who worked in the electronics industry,
carping about it in the late 60s...and that was back when US industry was
in
general still strong and US-based. I think he would be appalled, but not
surprised, if he were still alive today. I don't think many people "got
it"
back then, but it seems like a few more are beginning to, now.

It's a natural. As populations increase, their labor value relative
to materials decline. And exploitation of resources similarly works
to raise the value of materials. The two effects work simultaneously.
Technology works as a negative feedback to moderate the impacts, by
reducing the costs of extraction and exploitation, reducing the costs
of discovery, and finding better ways to do more with less material.

Hadn't really thought about it, but it makes sense.

I suspect that we are in for a transition in our lives.

Sure seems like it.

A few
millennia years ago, humans and all their domesticated livestocks
accounted for perhaps 0.1% of the total vertebrate biomass on land and
air on this planet. Today, that figure was just marked at about 98.5%
(see Paul MacCready, 2004.) We are pushing all the other animal life
forms off this planet.

At the same time, human populations well exceed 6 billion and are
expected to rise rapidly to about 9 billion by 2040.

0.3 billion in the US alone, just this week. That's up from 0.25 billion
when I was growing up. However, 20 % increase in 40 years is far, far less
than the global rate of increase.

In any case, even in the US we are rapidly seeing the impacts of
growing populations and resource competition. Our system is currently
factored for maximal individual consumption (laws regarding single
family dwellings dominate across the board, preventing even parents
from living with children, unless they are granted an exception for
disability.) I suspect that is simply going to have to change for
efficiency's sake, but it's hard to say anything about when. We might
first transition into an apartment-dominated culture, first. Not
sure.

Probably. May mean a return to an urban culture rather than suburban--the
difference is that the former suburbs will now be full-blown cities. That
may make a return to public transportation feasible, which I think would be
nice. Plus, it will be really easy to subdivide the enormous mansions that
are now passing as middle class and upper middle class new construction
these days, into 3 or 4 spacious apartments each. That construction sure
doesn't seem to be slowing down, either, anywhere that I've seen.

The over-arching effect is that the cost of tangible materials climb
faster than labor. Your time buys less raw material. Luckily for us,
technology has compensated and allowed much less to do a lot more for
us. But even with all that, we still have a growing percentage of
situations where it takes at least two workers to maintain a modest
lifestyle and one person cannot easily consider buying a home. When I
was growing up, it cost about 10% of your (tiny, in dollar figures)
income to buy a home. When I was at the age where I could consider
buying my first home, mortgage companies were already setting the
absolute limits on ratios at 28% for the secondary market products
(which account for almost every mortgage, today), so that if your home
payment exceeded that (with stringent adjustments) figure you would
NOT get a loan. Today, there are mortgage products that negatively
amortize being sold routinely, hoping that the increase in value will
exceed the growth of the loan. All bets are off. But mostly because
if they didn't do that, they wouldn't sell mortgages. A single
wage-earner can almost no longer cut it, anymore, in the US.

Yeah, but on the other hand, a far larger percentage of people are buying
homes now, as opposed to renting. After a recent relocation, I returned to
renting after owning two different homes over the past 12 years. I actually
think renting isn't such a bad thing. For one thing, a fairly small
percentage actually ever pay off their mortgage and actually *own* the
property. So in a sense, you're renting it from the bank until such time as
you sell it and move on to "rent" another home from the bank. And unless
you're going to pay on the mortgage for something like 7 years, all the
closing costs mean that renting truly is less expensive. This is all
particularly true with peoples' mobility these days. In some fields,
especially a lot of technical fields, switching jobs every few years (which
is supposedly the norm now) means moving every few years unless you happen
to live in a hotbed of your particular field (Silicon Valley or Seattle for
electronics, New Jersey or Houston for chemicals, Boston, SF or SD for
biotech, etc.) That tends to be much more true for the higher level
professionals in any field, but as one moves up in any field, the choices
for where you can live and earn the same money as you currently do, become
fewer.

Globalization and the transfer of manufacturing offshore the US has
put additional pressure on the wages, too.

Well, I view that as more of an equalization across the globe. Presumably
the average standard of living across the world is increasing (yes, that's
an assumption), but we won't see it because we've been riding on top for so
long, that the only place we can possibly go is down--and I'm inclined to
think *way* down. When I hear that chemists in India make $200 a month if
they're lucky, and when I think there are over a billion of them and only
0.3 billion of us, I think my salary is going to end up much closer to that
$200 a month than what it is now.

Education costs society a LOT OF MONEY. It is very expensive.

Yeah, but I don't understand why. Using your model, teaching is based on
the inexpensive labor part of the equation, not the expensive raw materials.
Why has education come to cost so much more as a fraction of gross earnings
now than it did in the 70s, even at a cheap state school?

It will be an interesting time, these next 30 years.

Most assuredly.

Eric Lucas

 

[Eeyore]

mmeron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:

"MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> writes:

A concentrated police action against Al Queda hasn't really been tried
yet. In the US the Mafai was defeated by police activity. It was an
organization of some considerable size and ceertainly not a small
isolated group.

Was samll enoug and isolated enough and operating over a limited
territory. Take an loose organization with tens of thousands of people
being involved over an unbounded territory and try. Good luck. How
much progress has been made in the war on drugs, so far?

What makes you think Al Qaeda even exists as a cohesive entity let alone have tens of thousand of members ?

All the evidence to date about European Islamist terrorism is that these are small independent groups of between say 5
and 20 ppl.

Graham

 

[JoeBloe]

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 06:46:17 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> Gave us:

JoeBloe wrote:

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:45:12 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> Gave us:

The US withdrew for Vietnam as the 'reds' came rolling in to Saigon. Is
that losing or what ?

We were held back from responding, if you'll remember, dipshit, as
that would have caused "an escalation". I am surprised that you
always forget that little detail (no I am not).

No. Wrong again !

You're full of shit, DonkTARD!

 

[JoeBloe]

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 06:50:27 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> Gave us:

JoeBloe wrote:

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:53:24 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> Gave us:

I doubt I'll ever forget watching the helicopters being pushed off the decks of
the carriers..

That's some victory for sure !

I'd say that you are quite clueless as to why they were being pushed
off.

To make room for more evacuating ppl of course you moron. There was no spare room on
the decks. Some 'copters even had to be ditched.

It looks like the DonkTARD actually got one right.

 

[JoeBloe]

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:23:04 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> Gave us:

Actually you tried that and it failed !

Bullshit.

 

T Wake wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news0mdj29rrhlrl7g74vu9kkqsg2ib9d0lb9@4ax.com...
On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:56:56 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

One thing I find odd, is that you don't think DNA/RNA mutation and
evolution
is amazing and wonderful in itself. Isn't it amazing how four bases can
produce such variety?

The four bases are a programming language. The *programs* and their
high-level structure will turn out to be astonishing in their own
right.

It is already astonishing that ACGT can spell out a human and a fruit fly.
The analogy of a programming language may be accurate, and is certainly
attractive, but answers nothing.

The four bases form a natural binary code and DNA is a storage medium
that is capable of being copied and duplicated. It can represent
anything or nothing.

You get a 4 way branch with a quantum mechanical comparison statement
so that an exact match between ACGT can occur in a single step during
strand replication.

The interpretation from messenger RNA (where the base Uridine
substitutes Thymidine) into amino acids is done by considering
triplets. This is the programming language if you want to think of it
that way. Decoding tables are well known and are almost identical for
all organisms - archaic and extremely isolated bacteria have minor
differences (both in coding and choice of amino acids).

http://library.thinkquest.org/20465/table.html
http://algoart.com/help/bioeditor/aatable.htm

There is a conjecture that the 20 amino acids used for proteins
represents another QM boundary by being the result of 3 nested
comparisons. It is an appealing idea but AFAIK not yet proven.

The hypothetical RNA world model is still the most plausible root from
chemical soup to self organising and replicating catalytic reactions.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/articles/altman/index.html

The simplest known self organising (inorganic) chemical reaction is the
BZ autocatalytic oxidation of malonic acid by bromate in the presence
of cerium salts. eg.

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/mathjournal/archives/2002/vol3-n1/paper1/v3n1-1pd.pdf

The discoverer had a lot of trouble getting his work published.

But none of this requires a designed universe- everything stems from a
few fundemental constants. Having an intelligent designer just gets you
into the "who designed the designer" trap.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

In article <6SsZg.20897$7I1.17348@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>,
<lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote in message
news:eh4vue$8ss_007@s847.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com...
In article <vf7Zg.17257$6S3.12040@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net>,
lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Uh, no...that would be your paranoia acting up again. About the only
thing
you'd be able to buy in a drugstore is isopropyl alcohol, and the same was
true in the 1980s.

Are you saying that it is impossible for me to make these
compounds?

It would be extremely difficult for you to get most of the starting
materials.


Are you saying that the only way these compounds
can be manufactured is by US companies?

No, where did that strawman come from?


Are you saying that
the formulations are trade secrets of only US companies and
that nobody else in the world knows how to make them?

Where did you get "trade secrets" from? We were talking about the
availability of starting materials,

That's what I thought we were talking about.

and they are most assuredly not, as you
asserted, available in the corner drugstore, or any other consumer outlet.

Would you mind giving an example?

Most of them are only available from chemical supply houses, and then only
to companies registered with those supply houses to receive chemicals from
them. It is probably not impossible to circumvent that system, but I have
no intention of trying to, so I don't know what it would take.

Any chemistry department can order chemicals. They do this to
"shortcut" what the kiddies do. Most don't want to spend the time,
and money to produce pure chemicals and water. Did
you ever take a chemistry course and notice how labs are set up?

Exports of obvious CW precursors from US companies (and in theory their
overseas subsiduaries) were eventually blocked in March 1984 according
to the WSU article. That sounds about right to me.

And why did those ingredients get on the US' restriction list?

Why are you being deliberately obtuse? They got on the list because they
can be used to make CWs.

That's exactly the point I'm trying to make. When they got used,
they were banned from export.

That's more cut-and-dried than it should be, but essentially correct.

Yet you implied that the US supplied all the resources that
Saddam used to kill people; you use this as an arguement that
the US shouldn't be in Iraq. Now, how you go from Step 1 to
last one logically is beyond me.

Actually, any research chemist will tell you that most chemicals have been
becoming more and more difficult to obtain for some time, and most of this
is to limit or prevent illicit use.

That's for drugs, I think.

For CWs and their precursors, the
culmination was the CWC in the late 90s, which set very strict limits on
materials whose only use beyond research is to make CWs (Schedule 1
compounds), and very close tracking on materials that have other legitimate
industrial uses but can also be used to make CWs (Schedule 2 and 3
compounds.) Beyond this, Schedule 1 - 3 compounds all have export limits.

Compounds. Now how do you stop filling orders for the ingredients
of those compounds? You cannot.

If you decide that noone should be allowed to make bread, you would
have to ban selling, distributing, and owning wheat seed. You are
focusing on the flour stage of chemical weapons. I'm talking about
the wheat seed stage of chemical weapons. Anybody can set up
a lab anywhere. If you don't think I'm right, count all the
news items that report meth labs. Note the word "labs".

Yet you are claiming that it is
the US' fault that other people use common chemicals bought from
US companies to kill people. I cannot follow your logic.

I said nothing of the sort. It is well-documented that the US government
supplied Saddam Hussein's regime in the 80s, in order to help them win the
war with Iran, our enemy at the time.

Sigh! How much of all Saddam's imports came directly from the
US _government_? You are being ridiculous. Government is not
the same as a US corporation nor any US European subsidiaries.

I don't know if that extends to CW
starting materials--I suspect it does not, but I don't know that for a fact.
I've never heard of CWs used against Iran, but that doesn't mean it didn't
happen.

What I'm taking the US government to task for is, on the one hand, arming a
despot when he was our friend, without conceiving of the possibility that he
might turn on us and become our enemy.

How do you know there was no thinking about Saddam becoming a
problem in the future? Any statesman or diplomat would never
make that assumption. It is the norm for people to change
alliances for the sole reason that their interests are better
served by changing sides. You do this at your job and
in any human relationship depending on the circumstances.

It's just another example of the US
government sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong (in this case, the
Iran-Iraq war),

Oh, really? Did you ever consider the state of an Earth where
the fUSSR controlled all oil shipping?

and then having that turn around and bite us later on,
ending up in the deaths of significant numbers of US troops and innocent
civilians in other countries.

That's life. If it isn't the US, it would be somebody else
dealing with the mess. Delaying this would mean that a
huge mess, probably uncleanable, would happen.

/BAH

 

In article <7buej255mvce4j69cljs4ohh20pikqcl9l@4ax.com>,
George O. Bizzigotti <gbizzigo@mitretek.org> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:44:50 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

As someone who works in the area of chemical demilitarization and
counterproliferation, I thought I could add some perspective to this
thread.

Thank you! I appreciated it.

<snip description>

/BAH

 

In article <1161169073.347610.229970@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
In article <1161090357.909390.53800@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
In article <eh01a0$ape$1@leto.cc.emory.edu>,
lparker@emory.edu (Lloyd Parker) wrote:

The precursor chemicals.

Specify. I suspect you don't want to make that list because
I could buy most of them at the drug store.

I doubt if you would find any of the reactive starting materials for CW
like phosphorous chloride, fluoride, oxychloride, thionyl chloride or
any of the other more complex intermediates like trimethyl phosphite
(some of which have legitimate use in plastics and insecticides) on any
drug store shelf.

I have my chemistry book, also known as the recipe book. Now specify
the ingredients needed to make those dishes you've just listed.

Are you a complete idiot?

No.

The key component of all the nerve agents is a phosphorus atom in a
specific configuration.

How does it get into this specific configuration?

These are the basic bulk chemicals at the start
of the chain leading to nerve agents and anyone in the chemical
industry would have known that even 30 years ago.

That's my point. And anybody who has taken chemistry can
set up a lab and figure out how to manufacture either the
chemical weapons and/or the chemicals to create those
weapons.

The people I've been talking to appear to believe that only
the US government knows how to make these things. They
seem to believe that only the US government can OK
all chemical invoices. Our business and politics do not
work that way. I think a lot Europeans are confused by
this because their businesses are generally government
controlled and/or union controlled espeically in the
manufacturing and mining areas.

In the US, the federal government isn't allowed to do anything. This
is gradually getting destroyed; everytime you hear about
a Supremem Court ruling about the Constitution deals with whether
the states or feds have power.

Buying the bulk reagents from Western sources at high purity allowed
them to concentrate on the hard part of industrial scale synthesis and
improved yeilds.

I understand that. However, that was convenience and it was possible.
What these Europeans (with whom I'm talking) are really saying is
that the US government should take control of all business and
make the decisions of what, who, what and where. IOW, they
want the US to become, not socialist, but communist.

These days even legitimate industrial users of
organophosphorous compounds are vetted.

But the poster wasn't talking about these days. He was talking
about 25 years ago.

Even 30 years ago it was well known. ISTR a lapse in MOD classified
patent maintainence allowed the synthesis of nerve agents to enter the
public domain in the 70's.

http://www.answers.com/topic/nerve-agent

So why am I an idiot when I stated that anybody, with a recipe
book, can make these chemicals.

The US even sold Iraq helicopters and heavy vehicles on a don't ask
don't tell basis. As did the UK, Germany and even Israel... see for
example the WSU website (and links).

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Exports of obvious CW precursors from US companies (and in theory their
overseas subsiduaries) were eventually blocked in March 1984 according
to the WSU article. That sounds about right to me.

And why did those ingredients get on the US' restriction list?

In the end because the UN was kicking up a fuss about Iraqs use of CW
against the human wave tactics of the Iranian forces and the US
government didn't much like the idea of how it would play at home if US
companies were caught red-handed selling CW precursors to Iraq.

Somebody posted what happened. Are you still saying that this
is true? Warning: this is a test of your thinking ability.

In essence they said to Iraq stop using CW and we will sell you some
other handy kit.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf

Exports of dual use and nuclear technology were still being approved
much later (although the US & UK governments tried damn hard to hide
it).

Define what "nuclear technology" is. I don't know what people
mean by this. I know what they want me to think.

Dual use nuclear technology

I did not ask for the definition of dual use. There is a difference
and has to do with the point I'm trying to get them to think about.

is a euphemism for things that have
innocent peaceful uses but also have obvious military uses well beyond
what they were sold for. It includes exotic alloys, precision machine
tools, remote handling devices, centrifuges and mass spectrometers for
instance. And a host of other bits needed to make a thermonuclear
device.

Including fertilizer?

Check out the infamous Matrix-Churchill show trial and the UK
government whitewash that followed its collapse.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/newsid_2544000/2
544355.stm

I ain't going to go look for that. I thought the guy was accusing
the United _States_ for handing free weapons and components over
to Iraq--not United Kingdom.

Same trick was used in the USA - they changed the export rules on the
quiet so as not to cause public concern (and then when dodgy kit was
found in Iraq tried to blame the companies who had been given export
licences on the quiet).

Do you still claim this after the nice gentleman posted what happened?

Or are you trying to get people to believe that everything the
UK did was also the US' fault?

The UK was only a bit player in this game. Matrix-Churchill kit was a
maker of high precision machine tools (capable of machining a nuclear
warhead or a non-cavitating submarine propeller).

The US government also seems to have been a bit player w.r.t.
shipping supplies.

Rumsfield went over there and embraced him and told him he was our
friend.

What was the context of this visit?

A promotional sales tour to help the Iraqis to win the Iran-Iraq war.

Win? I don't think so. In those days, most deals had to do with
keeping strengths equal with the Communists' (mostly fUSSR) satellites.

You didn't read the references I gave did you? The US hated Iran

It had nothing to do with hate. Where do you get this? Is this
a side effect of Hollywood's ideas of how the work of ruling is done?
There isn't any room for hate.

massively at the time (and it still does) and saw Iraq as a useful
counterweight in the region.

Even you use the word counterweight. that implies balancing. This
implies that there was an attitude that nobody should win that
war, where win mean acquistion of the territory and sole political
and economic power of that geography.

Preventing Iraq from losing was high on
the agenda. US foreign policy didn't get much beyond "My enemy's enemy
is my friend".

ISTR on his return from one trip about 1984-5 I think Rumsfeld said
words to the effect "Saddam is a bastard, but he is *our* bastard" -
can anyone find the exact phrase and date?

Now, what percentage of Iraq imports were from US companies?

Enough that the State Department paid a lot of attention to it (and was
promoting *more* trade in military hardware with Iraq on a don't ask
don't tell basis).

STrange. Are you sure you don't have two things mixed up?

Europeans have hidden assumptions about US companies and how they
function because their environment is based on their socailist

Bollocks. Have you ever been to Europe? Or for that matter even out of
state?

Yes.

All CoCom signatories had to comply with US rigged export regulations
on military or dual use technologies (including fast computers with
fancy graphics). It hit it's most ridiculous in the mid-80's when in
the same week an IBM salesman won a big export award for selling 2000
IBM PCs to Moscow University and a W German businessman was jailed for
5 years for selling 200 BBC micros to a school in East Germany (6502
CPU & cassette tape storage). ISTR Compaq PC's were "too fast" to be
exported under CoCom rules. Go figure.

We knew all about those kinds of export rules. Russia almost got
a VAX via those kinds of dodges.

/BAH