@Daumier: Yeah, this is especially the case for "Blood" - a significant chunk of which was originally recorded in English... very badly.
@acrobatic rabbit: More birds are killed by flying into buildings (and possibly cars) than by wind turbines.
@Jester21: Er.. Japan still has the second largest GDP in the world.
@LittleDragon: Well, there is the Fallout game series. But also, this comic (based on Fallout): [xulm.nma-fallout.com]
@Alchemistmerlin: Ended a conflict... and killed hundreds of thousands of people in seconds. Especially when detonating a bomb on an uninhabited island next to Japan, or at the very least in a rural area, would have showcased its destructive power just as well as dropping it on a densely populated civilian target. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes.
@MonkeyT: Well, as far as motor reaction time goes, there are a few robots that are definitely set, for that.
Saw this on Bruce Sterling's blog a few days back...
[www.youtube.com]
@jokono: Except that we're cutting down trees much faster than we're replanting them. What's more, trees tend to take about a decade of growth before they become significant as carbon sinks. On top of that, there is an upper limit at which too much carbon dioxide actually inhibits plant growth, rather than promoting it.
@Klebert L. Hall: Do you have some numbers on that? Regarding the efficiency of petrol vehicles versus coal-powered electricity? Or are you just guessing?
I'm pretty sure the amount of birds that die from hitting wind turbines is waaaay smaller than those that die from running into windows in cities. Or something like that. I don't remember the numbers, but a study was done that suggests that windmills hardly actually kill any birds at all. It's not like the things are hard to see, or extremely fast moving. Birds can avoid them.
@twophrasebark: Yes, I saw the Blue Bottle story linked from Bruce Sterling's blog yesterday. I think he is going to write one, too.
That story is terrifying. I would never buy that object.
Prometheus was the dude who got chained to a mountain to have his liver chewed out by a divine vulture for eternity, right? I mean, I can see the idea of naming a libertarian award after a guy who gave man fire so humanity could figure things out for itself--- but this seems to be playing into that libertarian persecution complex a little much.
That Jay-Z vid was rad. Only peripherally related, but thanks for posting the link, anyway.
@crashedpc : ゴキブリ and 蟑螂 division: That was the funniest thing I've read all day. Thanks!
@crashedpc : ゴキブリ and 蟑螂 division: Yeah, really, didn't we just discover a heretofore unknown tribe of HUMANS somewhere in the Amazon a year or two ago?
I was under the impression that contemporary elephants have been blamed for the expansion of grassland into forested areas, because they just knock the trees down. Oh well. I am not a scientist.
@Aaron Roberts: Not that you will read it, but allow me to disprove your ideas about environmentalism.
Worldchanging is a pretty major environmentalist blog/organisation that seeks the goal of a "bright green" future. They don't deny global warming, and they don't suggest that humankind needs to do "the same, but less," or that we need to go and live in mud huts to save the planet. They advocate progress, change, and prosperity in a way that will help the planet's biosphere rather than damaging it. And get this, all the tech we need to achieve that goal exists already - we just need to build the political will to help implement it.
And for what it's worth, when Big Oil starts to acknowledge that climate change is a problem, as BP has done and Exxon did when it cut funding to various climate-denialist think tanks, then it's a pretty safe bet that climate change is real.
@JasmineJahoob: I think it probably comes down to an issue of planetary alignment. Something akin to a solar eclipse would need to happen, I'm guessing.
Reminds me of that film "Bright Future" by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
[en.wikipedia.org]
[en.wikipedia.org]
@Janglesatwest: Well, that does have to do with the internet. Stores in malls have really high overhead (they need to rent a space, they need to stock all kinds of inventory that may not sell right away, they need to pay retail staff) - so they are more expensive. Amazon can afford to be cheaper because they can keep their inventory in big warehouses, and they don't need to pay staff to sell stuff to you.
@PalinFreeborn: How does a taxed free internet differ from the current system of paying private monopoly service providers? You're still paying for it, except that the money goes into government coffers instead of the pockets of The Board.
