As long as the correct measures are taken which prevent problems in the long run then I will be happy. I am pretty sure that is what Obama is aiming for too whether the way to accomplish that goal involves additional research or not. McCain is not convincing me that he cares about that. He is leaving me with the impression that he is more concerned about whatever gives the faster results rather than quality results.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
- Jun 27, 2005
- 6,010
- 1
- 76
Obama's response sounds to me like a calcualted political statement designed to sound good but have no real meaning, leaving him free to change his position at any time. Just like Hillary's "I don't think illegals should be able to get drivers licenses...but illegals do need them because they are going to be on our roads anyway". In other words, he's taking both sides of the issue so that both his supporters and the middle-of-the-roaders will hear what they want to hear.
Good, because we need a President in these critical times who has a real brain. He has, I believe, proposed 150 billion for research into alternatives, a small amount to what's needed, but way way up from where we are now. Go Obama, play that old political game and play it well. We don't need same ol McCain.
I want a president whose mind takes a flexible approach with most issues. That's a big part of thinking critically and responsibly. Besides, it sure as hell beats a candidate who makes a bunch of rock solid promises involving "guaranteed" outcomes that only turn out to be considered lies after they become president. Despite how much McCain may be campaigning to promise this and that, the truth is that he is just as free to change his position at any time if he becomes president just as much as Obama is able to. Or worse...he will realize after becoming pres that some of his promises are no longer a good idea but chooses to go through with them anyways because he doesn't want to be called a liar and reduce his chances of becoming re-elected.
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
- Jun 27, 2005
- 6,010
- 1
- 76
I want a president that is going to do say what he does, and do what he says. Flexibility is fine, but ambiguity is just political garbage.
frostedflakes
Diamond Member
- Mar 1, 2005
- 7,925
- 1
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I'm pretty sure that's what everyone wants regardless of their position on any number of issues. I would be left speechless if someone came in here and said, "I want the guy that tells me how he is going to do a bunch of stuff that I support and then turn around and do something completely different after being elected president."
Also, I personally do not find Obama to be ambiguous. I'm assuming that is what you are implying.
I love engineers and have a genius level aptitude in the area according to test that mean nothing. And I know what a pin head I can be. Everything you know about people you can only know by knowing yourself. I even woke myself up in the middle of the night with an AH HA engineering dream last. But I study all kinds of things and believe in liberal vs narrow pin head education. If you want to engineer you need to know something about soccer moms, no?
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
I think this is futile. Moonbeam fervently believes that nuclear technology is going to murder every last human being in existence, assuming that those evil, soulless, inhuman engineers don't do it first. :laugh:
You could do us a favor, and stop using the evil technology that an engineer designed. He probably laced it with radioactive compounds just because he can't see the big picture, and because he hates all human life outside of his little cubicle.
Suppose a big breakthrough in solar cell technology made nuclear plants obsolete.
Would you abandon your job in nuclear energy and find something else to do, or would continue pushing the obsolete technology?
Would you abandon your job in nuclear energy and find something else to do, or would continue pushing the obsolete technology?
Originally posted by: Fern
Nuclear power generators are used on submarines.
I'm interested to hear of your theory about deploying solar panels on submarines.
Fern
The cold war is over. Time to scrap most of our nuclear fleet. Time to quit wasting money on new submarines and aircraft carriers.
If only we could... But face it, we are humans and humans are an inherently warlike species. I don't think it can be bred out.Originally posted by: marincounty
Originally posted by: Fern
Nuclear power generators are used on submarines.
I'm interested to hear of your theory about deploying solar panels on submarines.
Fern
The cold war is over. Time to scrap most of our nuclear fleet. Time to quit wasting money on new submarines and aircraft carriers.
There is a distinct possibility that subs are the main stabilizing factor in the world now. Nobody (well, almost) really knows where they are.
And, I think the cold war is just chillin'. There's just too much money to be made from wars.
Originally posted by: seemingly random
If only we could... But face it, we are humans and humans are an inherently warlike species. I don't think it can be bred out.Originally posted by: marincounty
Originally posted by: Fern
Nuclear power generators are used on submarines.
I'm interested to hear of your theory about deploying solar panels on submarines.
Fern
The cold war is over. Time to scrap most of our nuclear fleet. Time to quit wasting money on new submarines and aircraft carriers.
There is a distinct possibility that subs are the main stabilizing factor in the world now. Nobody (well, almost) really knows where they are.
And, I think the cold war is just chillin'. There's just too much money to be made from wars.
Early Humans Were Prey, Not Predators, Experts Say
Prehistoric people were cooperators, not fighters.
That's the new theory proposed in two recent books and at a talk last month during an annual scientific meeting.
The theory is part of a movement to debunk a long-running scientific bias that early humans were warlike.
"It developed from a basic Judeo-Christian ideology of man being inherently evil, aggressive, and a natural killer," said Robert W. Sussman, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
"In fact, when you really examine the fossil and living nonhuman primate evidence, that is just not the case."
Agustin Fuentes, a researcher at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, agrees with Sussman.
"Humanity evolved much more by helping each other rather than by fighting with each other," he said. "We shaped the environment and changed how other organisms interacted with it."
Fuentes and other researchers believe that early humans were a prey species hunted by bear-size hyenas, saber-toothed cats, and many other large carnivores.
Early humans survived while other primate species died out because our ancestors cooperated to alter their surroundings, the researchers say.
This cooperation deflected the risk of predation onto other nearby prey species, which became more vulnerable because early humans weren't as easy to catch.
The researchers presented their theories in February at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.
Rewriting Assumptions
Sussman is the co-author of a 2005 book, Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution.
In the book, Sussman and Donna L. Hart, a University of Missouri-St. Louis anthropologist, first argued that early humans evolved not as hunters but as prey.
The book title harks back to a 1966 symposium, "Man the Hunter," held at the University of Chicago and a 1968 book with the same title.
Both the symposium and the 1968 book represented what was then cutting edge research into the planet's living hunter-gatherer societies. Many anthropologists would study these cultures' traditional lifestyles to gain insight into early human behaviors.
Some of the most celebrated research in support of the view of humans as warriors had come from Napoleon Chagnon, an anthropologist now retired from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Chagnon studied warfare and other attributes of the Yanomami, or Yanomamo, tribes of the Amazon Basin. His 1968 book on the tribe sold a million copies and became required reading in many anthropology classrooms.
This year Douglas Fry, a researcher affiliated with both Åbo Akademi University in Finland and the University of Arizona in Tucson, published a book called The Human Potential for Peace, which refutes some of Chagnon's key findings.
Fry writes that early studies defining humans by their capacity for killing are flawed. There's just as much evidence, he says, that humans had an established track record in peaceful conflict resolution.
Specifically, Fry's new book pokes holes in Chagnon's assertion that Yanomami men who were efficient warriors had more children.
Fry says a reanalysis of the data reveals that Chagnon failed to control for age differences. Fry concludes that it was actually older tribal members, not necessarily the best warriors, who had achieved greater success at reproduction.
And that, Fry says, can be expected in any culture, regardless of a propensity for violence.
What Do the Fossils Say?
Instead of studying living traditional cultures, as Chagnon did, Washington University's Sussman decided to base his research for Man the Hunted on a hard look at the fossil record.
"I have always, since my early days in anthropology, thought the hunting hypothesis was based on little actual evidence from the fossils," Sussman said.
Sussman found that our ancestors from three or four million years ago, Australopithecus afarensis, had small teeth, lacked tools, and were about three feet (one meter) tall.
Lacking size or weapons, this early human species most likely used brains, agility, and social skills to escape from predators, the anthropologist says.
At that time, he says, A. afarensis suffered the same predation rates as many other primate species?about 6 percent.
But about two million years ago there was a shift in the record. Somehow predation rates on other species suddenly went up while rates on human ancestors declined.
Another group of primates with humanlike attributes, the genus Paranthropus, went extinct by about one million years ago?the same time our predecessor, Homo erectus, was expanding across Africa and Eurasia.
All the Angles
Several other researchers presented in St. Louis their work exploring various genetic, hormonal, and psychiatric explanations for early humans' success.
James K. Rilling directs the Laboratory for Darwinian Neuroscience at Emory University in Atlanta. His brain-imaging studies have revealed a potential connection between the act of cooperating and the brain's reward centers.
If prehistoric humans got instant gratification from cooperating, he says, that may have aided group survival.
And Charles Snowdon, a psychologist and zoologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, pointed out that expectant monkey fathers gain weight and take on hormonal changes along with their pregnant partners.
The study offers evidence that these primates evolved to be good fathers, an important attribute for protecting young from predators.
Snowdon's endocrine studies have also shown that the likelihood that male primates will dally with new females decreases when the male already has a mate?and still more when the pair is raising offspring.
It's possible a similar system of mate fidelity aided the group cohesion needed to minimize predation in early humans, he said.
The University of Arizona's Fry says the notion that early humans relied on cooperation changes more than the widespread image of a club-toting early human in a warlike stance.
He believes it has implications for today's human interactions.
"Many of us Westerners share a view of human nature that humans are naturally warlike," Fry said. "This view helps perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Changing our perspective to match the anthropological record, he said, "opens new possibilities in today's world.
Early humans were scared little buggers. There were many predators. If these didn't get them the weather or disease would. This is why we have religion now. Some cunning early man discovered that, if he pretended to have the answers, people would believe and follow him. People followed and followed until some discovered the "truth". These enlightened souls banded together to overthrow the early despot who still had many followers. This resulted in much bloodshed. The rebels nonetheless prevailed. They then created their own truth.
Rinse.
Repeat.
---
Sorry, no links confirming what they were really thinking. In general, it doesn't matter what our forefathers were like - it matters what we are like.
Rinse.
Repeat.
---
Sorry, no links confirming what they were really thinking. In general, it doesn't matter what our forefathers were like - it matters what we are like.
Jesus Christ, I'm surrounded by pin heads. You know nothing. The associations that come into you airy head have no grounding in experience or reality. You're like a monkey grinding an organ. Your self proclaimed pronouncements don't mean shit. Drop the naive arrogant pretense and do some reading. You're a puddle a mile wide and an inch deep.
Fern
Elite Member
- Sep 30, 2003
- 26,907
- 174
- 106
Originally posted by: marincounty
Originally posted by: Fern
Nuclear power generators are used on submarines.
I'm interested to hear of your theory about deploying solar panels on submarines.
Fern
The cold war is over. Time to scrap most of our nuclear fleet. Time to quit wasting money on new submarines and aircraft carriers.
While I was joking above, I can't agree that the cold war is over.
I think we're in one now with the Chinese, it may lack the heated rhetoric we had with the USSR.
Even worse, we're losing. The Chinese are gaining on us greatly on the economic front - the one we used to beat the USSR.
Fern
Originally posted by: Fern
Originally posted by: marincounty
Originally posted by: Fern
Nuclear power generators are used on submarines.
I'm interested to hear of your theory about deploying solar panels on submarines.
Fern
The cold war is over. Time to scrap most of our nuclear fleet. Time to quit wasting money on new submarines and aircraft carriers.
While I was joking above, I can't agree that the cold war is over.
I think we're in one now with the Chinese, it may lack the heated rhetoric we had with the USSR.
Even worse, we're losing. The Chinese are gaining on us greatly on the economic front - the one we used to beat the USSR.
Fern
Maybe because we are overspending on defense spending, and have been for forty years?
The 2005 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined [7] and is over eight times larger than the official military budget of China. (Note that this comparison is done in nominal value US dollars and thus is not adjusted for purchasing power parity.) The United States and its close allies are responsible for about two-thirds of the world's military spending (of which, in turn, the U.S. is responsible for the majority).
Military discretionary spending accounts for more than half of the U.S. federal discretionary spending, which is all of the U.S. federal government budget that is not appropriated for mandatory spending.[8]
In 2003, the United States spent about 47% of the world's total military spending of US$910.6 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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