Comments

Did anyone else find themselves checking their inbox while watching that video ?

Actually, although it makes for a terrific fable, Jarred Diamond's assertions are quite tenuous and based on a lot of assumptions. It's commonly agreed by archaeologists that introduction of disease from Europeans was primarily responsible for the demise of the native Easter Island inhabitants, rather than the environmental impact of cutting down all the trees or any social traditions.

Oil supplies are unlikely to last anything like 150 years, but that's almost beside the point.

 

The falling rate of discovery, the inflated figures of OPEC and the rampantly increasing demand from China and India, means that it will very soon become far too expensive to use as a means of powering a motor vehicle.

USA Military budget for 2010 (including contingencies) is: $664 billion

 

You could do an awful lot of R&D into energy solutions for part of that.

I agree, the performance is abysmal, and I've given up trying to view or download videos from CH9.

'M' is already in use as the name of an existing ANSI-Standard language (X11.1-1995) with quite a long history behind it.

Notable New Hires: David Cutler

Now I'm getting interested.

I'm not arguing against any of that, and not really even arguing for/against anything... more questioning if we really need to be able to do something like track swine flu in detail ?

More of a general feel thing really... I just look at the way the press love hysteria, the way every nutcase on the planet seems to have a blog announcing imminent doom, and the way people love to gawp at and devour it all, and shudder a little bit at the whole "big brother" & "jerry springer" type of "reality entertainment" focus the internet is developing.

The question was more along the lines of wondering what actual use the information was ? i.e. how is it actually of benefit ??

stay safe out there!    ???

I don't think so, and unless you are actually a researcher in the field, I suspect its only value is voyeuristic.

With no disrespect intended, I do wonder sometimes if this sort of thing is not just another You-Tube type of distraction that is beginning to define the internet.

Why? What do you plan to do with the information ??