Some thoughts...
- I saw the followup story to [the soldier who complained about the lack of armor on his unit's HMMWVs to Rumsfeld after the reporter prodded him] on Fox. It struck me how slow the MSM is to catch up to the blogosphere; I read the exact same story some two days ago (I think) on a milblog (I can't remember which one... I'm tired, you see, and I'm too lazy to check). Maybe I just missed it yesterday on the news, but somehow I thought they'd give the same story again tonight.
It's old news that the MSM sucks compared to blogs but this was one of the more striking examples in my own life. As you can tell by that statement, I don't watch the TV news very much.
- It occurs to me that in some ways, human intelligence is hastening mankind's destruction. I don't mean in terms of nuclear holocaust, either. Some or many of you may disagree with me, but I believe if something very significant doesn't change, our species will be gone or at least decimated within 500-1000 years. The dinosaurs successfully lived for 175 million years, vs about 100 to 120 thousand years for us so far. I believe a greater sense of self-awareness, such as being able to feel sorry for ourselves, and thus compassionate for others, is one of the key destructors here. I could go on, but this is just supposed to be a thought, not an essay.
- I've been contemplating the possible outcomes of robotic advancements in the future. While I do not believe machines will ever truly supplant humans, I believe if they become a great enough crutch for humans, they will destroy us nonetheless. Imagine this: humans develop robots enough that they can build themselves, program themselves, and go to work automatically. Robots handle farming, industry, power, pretty much all work that doesn't require a creative and abstract mind behind it. Most humans don't have to work, because money is no longer necessary; robots do all the really critical work, yielding enough food and other products that everything is effectively free.
I know there are some big flaws in this, but since I've spent like an hour total thinking about it, it's about a 30 grit rough draft. Anyway, most people won't work unless they have to. Maybe half the population will screw around doing somewhat productive stuff and some people will pursue their passions in science and art and inventing (etc) because they love it. A large portion of the population does not work. The population booms (hey, more free time, more sex), and eventually either a disease will come along and pound the shit out of the world or the resources will be depleted. Either the entire population will die off (very unlikely) or the gene pool will be greatly refined and good things will happen. The end.
- This kind of corresponds to the above thought. I recently read somewhere (one of the blogs over there on the right) that for every 1 barrel of oil we consume, 1.77 barrels of oil are being found. So we're not going to run out in the immediate future. Cool. Unfortunately, a lot of people (not the blogger in question) will believe that that means we don't have to worry about oil running out at all. WRONG. So we were wrong about the planet's oil reserves. Big whoop. They WILL run out eventually, and we need to get working on it
now. Hydrogen? It's a storage medium right now: we don't have a way to separate the hydrogen from water that uses less power than the hydrogen can produce. It ain't a power source, at least not yet. Methane? Hey, there's tons of it in the Atlantic. Let's get on that. Hydro/Wind/Solar/Geothermal = really cool, but really impossible to scale up. They are and always will be supplemental energy sources. Let's start building some nuclear power plants, and stop being fucking pussies.
Boo hoo, Three Mile Island and
Chernobyl go the cries. First off, Chernobyl is not even close to relevant in the USA, and go learn about Three Mile Island before you tell me nuclear power plants are dangerous. Fission is great, but fusion is better. Let's get on that too.
- I see my thoughts went from short and shallow to long and involved. Shit happens. I'm done for now, I'll try to think up something worth reading for tomorrow.
- Hey I thought of one more. I saw one of the most interesting shows I've seen in quite a while on the Discovery Channel the other night, Dive to Bermuda Triangle. How come there aren't more shows like that? Just a few years ago Discovery and TLC used to be rife with cool shows, and now they're all home improvement or car/bike shows.
Lame. The History Channel is turning to shit too. While I would imagine those shows are being shown because they're more popular than edumacational shows that engage more than 0.01% of the brain, I can't help but think it's a ploy to make me subscribe to digital cable. All of the cools shows are on the premium Discovery channels; they even taunt me with commercials. I see one and I think "hey I really want to watch that!" Two seconds later: ...only on the National Geographic channel or Discovery Science channel. Bastards!
