adriantc

Some form of a council and of a ruling elite is a great idea, but it has one major flaw. In a few years or in a generation the ruling elite will become like a state in state, considering themselves better then the people they are supposed to serve. That by itself is not a major problem, but the fact that they will loose contact with the ones they serve. If you don't know the problems of society first hand how are you going to fix them?In other words this ruling elite much feel as if it is only a part of society, another wheel in the machine that is society. The communists though they are above the ordinary people - while people starved they enjoyed luxury... That kind of system is doomed from the very start!

I don't understand... Your idea is to build a ruling elite, born and bread for one reason - to rule! So basically that isn't a democracy since they are not chosen by the people from the people. But although not a democracy you still keep a parliament (or some form of it). I fail to see what it's is purpose. What I understand is that the main criteria for being part of that ruling elite is to be smart. Why not make it a dictatorship, which is far more efficient then democracy. The only disadvantage of a dictatorship is that is can easily become a tyranny (a thing that happened may times in history). But since you consider that elite to be the absolute best people to rule there is no reason for why you should not entrust them with absolute power? Does my thinking have a flaw?

I have seen a report on Yahoo about "Pixie Dust" some time ago. It truly has some amazing possibilities... After reading that report I did some searching and I found out scientists are hoping that in future they will be able to grow entire limbs or even organs. I guess sometime in the future we may owe the pig more then our daily food.PS: This seems to be my 500 post! I salute all other fellow users!

I am from Romania and we ended up on the 20th place. I really can't say our song deserved to be much higher, but I do have to agree with the fact that in the last few years Eurovision Song contest is no longer what it is used to be. We have to remember that this was the contest that gave winners like ABBA which was back then pretty unknown. I fail to see any way Eurovision could launch a band to the popularity of ABBA. Or at least something remotely near. Not only the songs don't have the same quality (as I think the music industry and all culture in general is going down), but also the way they are presented is of a far lower quality. I remember last years winner. They only won because they shocked everybody with their apparence and not with the quality of their song.That's why Eurovision is no longer what it is supposed to be - because it doesn't promote quality songs just shocking presentations (like this years winner which had the support of violinist Edvin Marton and Russian world champion figure skater Evgeni Plushenko... THEY practically won the contest). And we shouldn't forget the way people vote... based not on song quality but on vicinity. Eurovision should be more about songs then about presentation!

I think overpopulation should be the number 1 concern of mankind. All our problem are a direct or indirect consequence of overpopulation. The need for ever growing supplies of energy and food result in burning oil, the ONLY fuel that can power our ever growing greed. Thus comes global warming and with it a dozen new problems. According to the UN by 2050 the world population will reach a staggering 10 billion people. If 6 billion is a lot and comes with all this problem only imagine what 10 billion people means! What we don't realize is that overpopulation is one of the easiest problems to fix. And as I have said fixing that problem would fix most of our other problems. So what is the solution? I already stated this in another thread but I shall do it again in detail. Yes a war could lower our numbers, but taking in consideration the power of the weapons, at the end of it, we will probably be back in the stone age. It will fix our problems, but not the way we want it. As for a deadly plaque... many scientist say that isn't possible. It's extremely hard even to invent a virus in the laboratory with 99,9% mortality and even if there were in a few hundred years we would have the same problem all over again. And there is one more reason for why all of this solutions aren't any good... because they require for people to die, suffer, etc. There is one more alternative that doesn't involve all that suffering and dieing... Stop making babies - control is the easiest way to fix our problem. Besides that doesn't require much money or effort. Mathematics can show us how many children we could have in order for our numbers to slowly decline to a certain level and then stay on that level. Everything must be done slowly since our society relies on young people to supply money to old people. Scientists say that the perfect number of people would be 1.5 billion, a level at which our planet would have much more to offer to us. No more huge demand for fossil fuels, no more hunger since the planet will be perfectly capable of taking care of that. A theory I like says that with one child per family policy by 2075 the population of he world will be reduced by almost half to 3.43 billion. By the year 2100 to 1.6 billion, the level of population from the 19th century. Wouldn't that be a lot better then the predicted 10 billion people by 2050?!

I wasn't necessary thinking about explicit stuff... even their presence would have a positive effect since it is known most males would do anything to please a good looking lady. Of course that approach would mostly work in highschools and universities! And unfortunately you are right - there aren't many teachers like that... and when they are society blames them PS: You may say that's screwed up, but I know you're thinking just the same thing!

Yes! A fishing ship is truly a menace to the US security. I really don't understand why the US doesn't go to DEFCON 2 - the danger is just too great to simply ignore! I was thinking that if the fishing ships offer such a security risk someone should give them the idea not to build bomb proof shelters, but "fishing ship proof" shelters. :)Joke aside - some citizens may really believe this... And if the terrorist threat is so big, isn't what the terrorists what - for people to be afraid to leave their homes. If there is a terrorist threat there is only one way to defeat it and it's not thru guns and bombs, but by courage. A terrorist wouldn't be called a terrorist if no one would be intimidated by him... Their "jobs" require terror and warnings like this only help them in doing what they want!

I don't know what is happening to the world... First there are student - teacher relationships (which, if I were them, I would strongly encourage). Who wouldn't want a hot 20-25 years old teacher teaching you "more" then the usual math or grammar ... some of the more basic facts of life That would really be an incentive for students to learn more . I can only imagine what a better world that would make...That being said - how in the name of God could you blame a teacher (!!!) in the 21st century (!!!) in the USA (!!!) of being a witch (or doing wizardry). That is absolutely crazy. What on earth could you ask your children if you accuse the teacher of doing wizardry. And what is worse is the fact that somebody took this accusation seriously.

WOW... I read the title of this topic twice, just to be sure I'm not mistaking... I think theoretically it could be done since we share so much of our DNA with our closest living relatives, the chimpanzee. But why would somebody do it? What is to be gained? I fail to see any reason - beside the "just for the fun of it"... Seriously it makes a lot more sense of cloning people then cross breeding! At least there is something to be gained from it (immoral perspective: organ donors, Ginny pigs...).Anyway I don't think a "apeman" could breed or live a long life. The miracle of evolution has put in place some "security measures" against such cases. Usually such individuals are born sterile, so it cannot have any offspring's. They are also inclined to have fatal diseases. We have to remember nature builds things a lot more durable then we do. So no civilization for them - if it does happen it will only be able to multiply in a lab.If we are to cross that border, the cross breeding border (nice word game), it means we have already crossed other borders, like cloning or gene manipulation, borders which cannot be crossed back. If that day shall come may God (if there is one) have mercy on our souls!

Here is an edit to my first post... I finally got my printer to work! Not only the printer, but the scanner too. It isn't very hard but you have to know what to do. The terminal is the Achilles? heel. Of course, for the advanced, it's Linux main strength over Windows. But for someone coming from Windows it is a nightmare. As I have said there is some improvement in the software install process, but there is still room for some more.And I don't want to forget the WOW part for the user interface. Absolutely gorgeous even on old configurations! Forget Vista Aero...

A few weeks ago I decided to give Linux a second chance after a disappointment with Fedora Core a few years ago. And since I knew Ubuntu was so popular I wanted to try it. But since 8.04 was almost ready I though Live CD would make the transition. Yesterday I finally installed Ubuntu on both my computers (a desktop and a laptop) using Wubi (a great tool... every Linux distribution should have one) since I can't let go of Windows just yet. Anyway the installation was... extraordinary! I don't know if a normal install is so easy but Wubi sure made it look like a breeze. Driver support is good (I would have said great if there were drivers for my Lexmrak printer, but frankly I didn't even expect it to work). And with all the preinstalled software you don't have to loose hours on lengthy installs. I have to mention I had some problems with my wireless on the laptop, but today it works just fine so I think it had something to do with my wireless router, not with the OS. But what I liked the most was XGL and Compiz. The two make the user interference a great experience! The wobbly windows and the cube are great. But what is extraordinary is the low requirements - it works just fine on my desktop; a system on which Vista was rather a painful experience! I have to admit that what made me give Linux a second chance was the curiosity I had for the new effects. I was expecting tones of writing in the terminal, but with only a few clicks everything was configured and working. I find that as such a great improvement over other distributions I tried!Bottom line is YOU SHOULD TRY IT. Wubi installs Ubuntu like a normal program in Windows and adds a new entry to the boot menu. No need to change partitions or anything... And if you don't like it you can uninstall it just as easy! Try it - you may like it! I did!

I can't say I agree with you... I'm an atheist so by nature I like to put the blame on the church... For some time I believed that Christianity was something, if not invented, but at leased sanctioned by Rome to empower it further, since it is a known fact that religion is the easiest way to control the masses. But it wasn't the time to control because the romans were, for better or for worse, pretty intellectual, a big part of them alphabetized (knew to read). At least in Rome's golden time. A people aware of themselves would be very hard to control. It was shown during the Dark Ages when lack of culture meant a much powerful church. So the fortunes of the church are strongly related to the (un)fortunes of the people. That's why Christianity wasn't something planned... although a few centuries later it was used for the first time by the emperor Constantine who was commanded in a dream to place the sign of Christ on the shields of his soldiers. But by that time the empire was already weakened. As for your theory - it is worth discussing... It's actually a pretty common theory. Many historians think that the Roman Empire was never entirely destroyed, or at least that it did only centuries later then the official date. I have a book discussing this theory - it's called The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins. In the book he uses archiological evidence to show that the collapse of the Roman Empire was a tragically event for all of it's inhabitants. What he finds shocking is the collapse of complexity of the Roman society. Most of the things the Romans took for granted dissapared completely after the fall of the Roman Empire. One thing was so shocking I remember it even today... The scientists too ice samples from the poles and from the ice they measured the amount of CO2 in the air. What the amount of CO2 shows how developed was the industry. What they found out after the measurements was that the industry never reached the same level as the Roman Empire period until the industrial revolution - some more then 1000 years after! Basically what that means is that because of the fall of the Roman Empire the European world (and most of the rest of the world) stagnated for over 1000 years. The trade levels of that period, compared with ones from other periods also suggest the same conclusion. The decline of the quality of life was so big, so fast that only a destruction could explain. What do you think about that?

I have heard about this research a few days ago and I though what is the use for the common user. Between servers such a connection would be something great, but remember you're HDD can only write so much less information in a second. So basically the bottleneck wouldn't be the Internet connection, but you computer.Besides that... what use would you have for a 1GBps connection? Of course you're HDD can't write that fast, but even if it would what in the name of God would you download so it requires such a monster connection. I have a 30Mbps (~3,5MBps) connection and to be sincere I don't need more. HD movies are no problem whatsoever even on this connection!It is true the speed requirements are growing, but not that much. I guess they should use this technology to better connect different countries, rather then individuals...

Now I would go that far... USA is some kind of a modern empire as long as they can do whatever they like on Earth... They said down with Afghanistan - no one protested most supported; then came Iraq - most protested, no one did anything... And I guess that sooner or later we will see the same story being played all over again with Iran or North Korea. I would be surprised if it wouldn't happen... So the USA is an empire; but not an empire like the British Empire was; or like the Roman Empire for that matter. The main difference is that the USA does not want territory, but wealth (can be read as "oil"). Because it is know that however controls the oil flow controls the world!

Yes... that is my theory and it has been verified for many empires... the Roman Empire, the Third Reich... right now I can't think of other examples that contradict my theory. Think of an empire like a house. A house built fast, with prefabricated parts, will crumble just as fast as it built. Of course on the larger scale of an empire the building materials are the citizens, the institutions and the army. The strength of an empire and it's institutions come from the process of trial and error. A strong empire must grow exactly like and organism... it must have an infancy, before growing to become adult. The Roman empire grow from virtually nothing to almost everything. First of all an empire in it's infancy conquers (historically it is military conquest, recently economic conquest) and the basis of it's power are the citizens - without their support it doesn't stand a chance. A conquered nation cannot provide that support since at first it will oppose the conquerers. It's citizens won't join the army since it's not their fight... Beside that, a conquered nation may not have the same institutions so it requires time to adapt. Before committing to the goal of the conquering empire it's citizens must feel part of the empire and that too requires time... It's all about cohesion! And that cohesion can only be archived by developing the conquered nations not only by using up all their resources. The Third Reich never stood a chance because it employed a "terror" strategy. The Nazis, with their stupid theory that they where the master race ignored the conquered nations, using them as slaves. Maybe the Germans are smarter (my own opinion) and they deserve to rule us all, but not like master vs. slave, but equals sharing the same goal. I think my theory can be applied to the current ruler of the world... the "American Empire". It was built very fast, on the basis of two world wars. Maybe they don't admit it, but their fortunes represented the death and horror of millions. If there weren't for the 2 World Wars America would not rule the world this days. It is as simple as that. The "American Empire" is not focused on people, but rather on money. It doesn't control the world military, but financially - a fact that makes it weaker. It was built in 50 years, it shall end just as fast. And, as another personal opinion, it's downfall has started some years ago...

I have heard about similar studies many times... It seems a 2 year old child is mentally exactly like a mature chimp. I think they have the brain capacity to process and interpret all the senses, but they don't have the practice of doing so. While our brain has exercised for thousands or millions of years primates brain remained basically unused. While it is said we humans only use 10% of our brain capacity the apes only use barely 1%. Besides this results are expected since the chimpanzee and the bonobos (also a chimpanzee) are our nearest living relative. Our species separated some 6 million years ago. It may seem much, but on an evolutionary scale that is rather only a little. Not to mention we share over 97% of our DNA with the chimps...But we have to remember there are more animals with highly developed brains. Take for example the dolphins. Some scientists say that intelligence is in fact the brain mass / brain mass required to control the body functions. In other words they say intelligence is the excess of brain matter. We humans have a 9 ratio (we have 9 times more brain then our body needs) while the next animal in line is not the ape, but the dolphin with a ratio of 7. So you see we aren't much smarter then dolphins are. But we have trained our brains, while the dolphins are barely scratching the surface of their brain possibilities.

Of course the church will never agree that people should stop making a lot of babies. If I remember correctly the Bible says had God, when He created man, said "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it...". I guess we took that too literary. If there is a God (which I don't believe) he must be very disappointed of His children. The church will always like to control many people so less babies means less people to control. The church, like any other institution, is still made out of people. People with the same flows... greed, envy, need for power, etc. ... they might say they are different, but they aren't and they will never be any different then you and me. They simply do a better job of hiding those unwanted feelings. Beside that there is another reason why nobody will be able to implement a one child per family policy. All our social services require young people to work and supply money for those who are retired. Same story for heath insurance and so on. Any brutal decrees in human population (half in a generation) would result in a total collapse of the social services. There will be a lot of old, needy people and only a few to pay for their support. Any change in our numbers must be done very slow, over a few generations so it wouldn't have catastrophic results in the worlds economy. But today the problems are too great to be resolved over a large period of time. This might be a one way road, a road that takes us to our doom. I'd like to talk our an idea (might even be called theory) that is presented in the book I was telling you about ("The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman). Most of you know that our nearest relative is the chimpanzee with which we share 97,3% of our DNA. But there are 2 types of chimpanzee... the common chimpanzee (Wikipedia) and the bonobo (Wikipedia). The common chimpanzee is our grandfather and it resembles a lot with us. While they are almost as bright as us, being the only animal that uses tools they are also as crude and evil as we are. There are reports of chimps stealing into the territories of other chimp groups, ambush unwary lone males and maul them to death - doing this patiently over months until the territory and females are theirs. Also know is the fact that in the common chimpanzee society there are great blood battles to determine the alpha male, battles which remind us of our own power struggles. On the other hand, it's less successful brother, the bonobo (only 10 000 remain compared to 150 000 common chimps) have a matriarchal society and a peaceful nature. They use sexual intercourse as a greeting, a means of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation, and as favors traded by the females in exchange for food. Although they defend their territory, no intergroup killings have been observed. According to Weisman the bonobo have been mythologized among those who insistently hope that the meek might yet inherit the Earth. In this spirit he states the following theory... During the last ice age, with all the water being frozen in ice the vast forests of Africa run dry and only patches of forests remained. So our ancestors, the chimps, were forced to leave the forests in the search for food and so became bipedal and evolved further into us. With global warming and our extinction, there will come another ice age - the african forests will once again go dry and maybe some other ape with have the courage and the need to get out of the trees and head to the plain ground becoming bipedal and following the same steps our ancestors once took. Imagine the offspring's of the peaceful bonobo building their own better society. It is far fetched, but I guess we were also far fetched back when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Hope I didn't bore you to death. Comments are welcome!

I have to agree it wouldn't be very fair, but it must be done - and it must be done fast. When did stuff like this led to war? It is not fair, but I fail to see where is the infringement of freedom. Killing can be considered an infringement of freedom since it doesn't let you do whatever you like, but it protects society from madmen. In the same way (but on a much larger scale) the one child per family policy protects mankind from the danger of overpopulation. Law is something we all agree on for our benefit. Every law is an infringement of freedom by definition. But we acknowledge that infringement for the benefit of a working society. As I see it every problem we now have with global warming is due to the population increase. By 2012 we will be 7 billion people and by 2030 more then 8.2 billion... that is a huge increase which will result in increased requirements for food, fuel, shelter and so on... The only way this requirements can be fulfilled is by burning more oil (until it will run out), genetic engineering plants and farm a lot more. So everything is related more or less to human numbers. A one child per family policy may be hard to impose, but it will mean less pollution and a much better lifestyle. And on the long run the human race can finally say it has realized what it has done wrong, and that we are in a way self-conscious and in control of our own destiny.

It is pretty scary to hear that the Maya have made such a prediction. We have to remember there were times when they were hundreds, if not thousands of years ahead of the rest of the world. Did some research after reading this thread and I found 21st (or 23rd) of December 2012 isn't necessary the end of the world as we know it. According to Wikipedia "esoteric sources interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order." So that doesn't imply the end of the world, merely some event that would lower our numbers. Every time I see a "end of the world" topic I have to remember that their prediction is pretty accurate anyway. The human race is on the verge of destroying itself, so if it is the 21st of December 2012 or the 21st of December 2112 there isn't much difference. As someone has stated on a website regarding this prediction... when the end of the world will come we will know! (I will add to that the word "why")

I think it would only be scary the first few times until you get the hang of it... It would be an extraordinary experience to be able to see everything around you... A panoramic view from 10.000 meters. Plus the fact that you can see the internal workings of the plane. Thinking about it many things would be great if they were made out of glass or at least something transparent - cars and specially car engines... Think how it would be to see the pistons going up and down; to see the explosions and the smoke. But that's just dream... there is no glass strong enough to contain those explosions. They could make planes out of glass thick enough to be pffer protection, but it would make the plane much too heavy so it wouldn't be efficient. I have never flew in a plane so I am looking forward to the day when I will, with or without the glass plane.

Everybody hates spammers! ... My yahoo email is bombarded daily with tens of spam emails. It's partly my fault because I registered with my good email to all kinds of doubtful websites, but lately it is becoming very annoying! Some of them even get into the inbox... It seems they are becoming better into cheating the spam filters! And I can't simply change my email since everyone knows it!It is very interesting for why they arrested him - fraud and tax evasion. He is like a virtual Al Capone. It's a good thing he is behind bars, but they should make more efforts to stop his buddies too!

That is a very nice idea - it would be very very fun! And there should be like two versions of "Robby the Robot", one for experts and one for beginners. Why two versions? Even though I haven't actually programmed a robot I think you have to know more then the actual lines of code. You have to know how it works, what it is made of and things like this. That is of course it you want to learn him make tricks... The expert version should require this kind of knowledge, while the other version would only require the programming skills.Of course "Robby the Robot" would be a toy for nerds (or wanna be nerds ) so it's market wpuld be rather small. So no millions would be made out of it... Still, it is a great idea!

If I were American I would have been embarrassed by what they did, but this only proves it's not their place to be there. It is of course something known that the brightest minds of a country don't go to war to die - you send those how need money or have to pay some kind of debt to society. It's only normal what happens because like it or not I wouldn't go to Irak and I'm sure you won't too so as everyone can see you must be desperate to go there. Selection is very poor because they simply don't have candidates... stay home - live a quite life / go to war - get killed young. Besides I am a supporter of the theory that we, as human species, have some kind of gene that makes us evil (or at least capable of doing evil stuff). Society and law is what restrains that gene from manifesting, but in the "wild east" there aren't so many constraints and the result is very sad.

I don't think the technology is much of a problem, but the implementation is very very difficult. First of all it is very hard to wire miles over miles of road mainly because of the costs. Second I don't see how anybody could connect the car by wire - wireless is the way to go. Of course that also means higher costs.But a nation wide network like that means the car won't need to be driven by a human. People will only input the destination and since a central computer knows where all cars are there won't be collisions or other accidents. The roads would be much much safer this way...

Although I am an atheist and I don't confess much (only did it once in my life and after being somewhat forced by my religion teacher) I find the idea very good. I can't (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) tell the priest everything since I am ashamed (for example: how can anybody go to the priest and tell that he had fantasies with his best friend's mom). Some kind of Internet based confessions would make it much easier to admit your sins since you don't come face to face with the priest. Just like when at the phone you can say things you would never say in the face!But I guess if you fell no shame you don't learn anything from the sin. So I guess you have to feel ashamed by what you did so you won't do it again...