This is what economic growth means, and what some regressives fear so much.
How much would money would you have to be offered to give up the Internet for the rest of your days?
We are all rich beyond the wildest dreams of yesterdays Kings.
Thanks to The Fund for American Studies.
An interesting piece mainly on supply and demand curves.
Highlights the enormous benefits that come from the net.
We have faster access to much more information than ever before but the issue that wasn’t addressed was quality control of that info.
There’s a lot of junk out there.
All In All a puff piece for Apple.
🙂
KK
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I saw it as a great argument in favour of laissez-faire capitalism, as opposed to Socialist centralised planning and control.
Apple buys the time of people who have great ideas, and then finds ways to produce what they can dream about.
The clip clearly brings out the fact that everybody benefits from that approach. Nobody forces you to consume the junk content that is produced as a by-product of getting some really creative tools.
Yes, they showed Apple products, but right now, they are the dominant industry leader in terms of customer usability. That will change, as other bright folk seek to break down the cognitive boundaries that Apple creates.
120
And as for the junk, well I would rather self-filter the junk, than have somebody else, whose motives I do not understand, filter it for me.
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Sorry, my comment was just a puff piece to get the ball rolling, no intention of rubbishing Apple.
Another innocent observation.
While out walking near the beach yesterday it was interesting to see that maybe one third of those passed were deeply engrossed in their mobi phones: the internet?
The rest of us were taking in The seagulls waves, clouds and scenery.
🙂
KK
120
My sister and we were rolling about with mirth while walking through a park in Solihull. It was a beautiful day with beautiful trees, flowers and birds to look at. Almost everyone but especially large groups of young people were glued to their smartphones. We later heard about some phenomenon called Pokemon-something might be one cause. However, I’ve been collided with in the past by smartphone-fixated youngsters…pathetic.
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Yes I want to have a t-shirt that says “get off your roten smart phones!”
Even though I work in IT and people think I should be a tech nerd in that space, I hate that fact that these damn phones dominate our lives….my old Nokia green screen will be retired once the phone companies switch off the solid GSM work horse network in December. Sad face.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/germany-stadtwerke-augsburg-ground-traffic-light-smartphone_us_571f967de4b0b49df6a91b5e
“The program’s launch comes one month after a 15-year-old girl died after getting hit by a tram in Munich, as she crossed the road staring at her smartphone with headphones plugged in, according to German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
About 1 in 6 people cross the road distracted by their smartphones, according to a survey published earlier this month that was conducted among 14,000 pedestrians in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rome and Stockholm. Offenders included people who crossed the roads with children, the report noted.”
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Good idea, but I suggest you spell rotten with two tees.
And regarding your last paragraph, you make a good arguement in favour of evolution and the survival of the fittest (or the most spatially aware).
40
a friend of mine got hit by a tram in Munich. they stopped the tram, dusted him off, asked how he felt, etc., checked his passport. Six months later, they sent him a long form. He thought it was an insurance release form. But no. It was a bill for damages to the tram.
00
The internet is basically the interconnection of the collective human brain – For better or worst.
And as we all know, a lot of weird stuff goes on in our heads. But our up-bringing and culture, train us to filter out the bad, and only act on what will benefit us and our community.
Fact is we are bombarded with information, from multiple sources from the moment we are born. We take our cue on what to act on, and how to act on it from those around us.
[Editorial discretion applied -Fly]
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Yes and no. I’d argue with a deluge in information, we also need to teach our kids how to filter that informaiton and most importantly how to argue a point constructively. I have a low tolerance to dimwits, and if you wont engage on apoint and at least spend some time arguing for it, you should also forfeit your right to vote…..
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There is said to be a pretty persistent problem with students who just download their essays from the internet (which raises the question: is it plagiarism, if someone downloads an essay that was intended to be downloaded and then someone else in the same class downloads the same essay?).
The problem with filtering information, or failing to, has to be serious, as well. The information at the top of the search engine list may not be at all what somebody is looking for, but, unless the searcher has at least a degree of insight, he or she isn’t going to know.
Suppose a student needs to find out about a civil engineer called Robert Stephenson. If the name is entered in that form, many of the results will be about the English railway engineer of that name. If it’s entered as “Robert Stevenson“, you’re more likely to get information about the Scottish lighthouse-builder, or even Robert Louis Stevenson, the novelist (and the older Stevenson’s grandson).
Even when the searcher is confident of having found information on the correct subject on the internet, it doesn’t follow that the information itself is correct. There is plenty of scope to post articles of very dubious accuracy (the Wikipedia climate scandal came up here again just a few days ago). Even an innocent error, such as transposing the digits in a date, or a melting-point, or whatever, is likely to stick around on the internet for years.
70
What struck me was the almost uniform desire to improve our circumstances and having done so, quickly becoming oblivious to the improvement and increasingly restless for the next new and better thing, which the wealthier have the ability to get to first – which has the nice effect of helping market accessibility and product development.
We are hardwired to persistently seek an improvement on our present reality, and our structural dissatisfaction, discontent and threat responses provide us with the near universal motivation to undertake the task. Woe betide anyone who pushes back against millions of years of evolution in the name of one standard deviation centennial temperature change of 0.98C ± 0.27C.
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That was simply a vapid piece of crap. It had absolutely nothing to do with analysing/assessing what the internet is all about.
30
It may have been a little vapid, but it was not intended to analyse the Internet, but rather how its value now far outstrips its cost. It makes a solid argument that free enterprise is the only economic system yet capable of achieving what in reality is vast wealth.
It truly is as Jo says, we are all rich beyond the wildest dreams of yesterdays Kings.
00
I’d rather have the internet; money is useful but if you have plenty the government want to take it from you for their various crackpot schemes!
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This was my immediate reaction to the heading; now perhaps I should read the piece properly.
70
some quotes from the Video, which you might have partially noticed in passing:
,
and
Those are powerfuful statements and we do not hear enough of them in our Socialist twirl.
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Yes, and that’s the core idea behind the IPCC’s global warming/climate change war. They want to get rid of capitalism and create a giant (global) welfare state. Some quotes from relevant IPCC office holders.
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated. – Ottmar Edenhofer 14 November 2010
Ottmar Edenhofer is the co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III.
Last year, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a similar statement.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution”
10
The internet is a double edged sword but it’s a weapon I’d rather see wielded in order to fight the current attack on sovereignty.
90
Which is why it must never he handed to the UN.
160
And we need to make sure that people generally understand the need to deny the UN control. Because far too many people are asleep, apathetic, react only to what they personally experience, like the “hip pocket nerve” that is described in political circles.
60
…or believe what the MSM-dominated interwebs tells them…..
I accidentally watched half an episode of Gogglebox the otehr day. Helf the time I sort of felt people could see BS and filter it out well, the other half the time I recoiled in horror at how brainwashed people are on many Australian cultural “sacred cows” that I see as only continuing the same mistakes australian society has made for the last 100 years….
30
The lefties characterise that argument as ensuring internet neutrality and stopping artificial throttling of traffic by preventing Google and Viacom from getting control of the Internet core routers.
Sounds plausible until you realise what their alternative implies.
“The Net is too important to society to let corporations control it”, they say. Actually it’s because it’s so important to our democracy that you shouldn’t let politicians control it.
Now that I’ve agreed with AndyG, he will be worrying that he is wrong about it. 🙂
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People are allowed to come to the same conclusion, by presenting totally opposed arguments.
30
Louis XIV, the Sun King, was the absolute monarch of France and had Versailles built as his court. Among other things he did not have access to include:
-motorised transport
-bitumen roads
-antibiotics
-refrigeration
-air travel
-photography
-telephony of any sort
-radio and television, but at least he was spared BBC-produced documentaries on David Attenborough
-modern dentistry
-modern surgery
-etc, etc, etc, etc.
The modern citizen of a developed country, and even the better-off citizens of developing nations have access to a whole range of products and services that ancient kings and queens could not even conceive of, let alone their subjects.
I just wish I could bring back my grandparents, for instance, and show them the wonderful gadgets available to people like myself.
And none of these wonderful goods and services were developed by politicians, or celebraties.
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That’s all quite true but so often these things were popularized by Royalty and governments, not individuals. It was particularly true of railways which
were keys to troop transport. Napoleon built boulevards to allow the movement of armies. Hitler built autobahns.
War was the greatest spur to the adoption of all these things.
So much good came from WW2 that it is beyond measure.
Antibiotics were made in bulk for the D Day landing, thanks to Roosevelt and the beer manufacturers were the ones with the technology to mass produce. How many lives have been saved since.
Blood transfusions were discovered in WW1, by necessity
Stainless steel
Aluminum aircraft
Jet engines
Many materials like plastics, rayon.
PLasma arc cutting accidentally in the creation of the Liberty ships
Explosives of course, essential in mining
conversion of coal to petrol
high performance engines
many metal forming inventions
radio communication
the first computers for Bletchley Park
long distance communication
radar and so microwave ovens
small refrigeration for fresh food for soldiers, not just ice manfucture
not to mention the revolution of society at the end of the war where the factories were changed to mass produce
consumer goods like refrigerators, stoves, cars, motor bikes, hot water services and little things
like annual holidays, because the consumer revolution made workers personally wealthy. Before the war
unemployment in the US was 25%, in Australia 40%. After the war nearly unknown.
In the 1960’s, 1970’s it was the cold war and the space race which led to modern electronics. The creation of the first 8 bit 8080
chip was a single vote to build an 8 bit processor instead of a 4 bit processor for a traffic light controller. Much of the world
still does not have traffic lights, as in India, Egypt.
Then you get the internet, which was handed free to the public as ARPAnet while the military went on to develop its own systems which
allow the operation of drones half way around the world.
So the internet was free. The geni was out of the bottle. The question is whether it needs to be driven by governments at all but
governments can cooperate. Other governments can restrict as is done in China to stop Google and much more. In Australia the Labor
party brought in a single backbone, the NBN for reasons which you have to suspect has nothing to do with performance and all to do with control
of information and the blocking of web sites and individuals and censorship by a central government body. You always have to suspect
governments who want to control and so restrict commerce. The most worrying would be the unelected group of very self interested people who
run the anti democratic United Nations and European Union.
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TdeF: I can’t really agree with your analysis. While it is true that wartime provided a massive stimulus to development most of the inventions took place earlier. Often much earlier.
In the UK, where we think we invented steam railways, there was no local war at the time. It happened during the Industrial Revolution that happened around 1750 to 1830. We had tarmac’d roads at the same time.
The first bold transfusion attempt was in 1665 according to this: http://www.aabb.org/tm/Pages/highlights.aspx
Frank Whittle presented a design for a jet engine to the Air Ministry in 1920.
We have had stainless steel since the early 19th century: http://www.bssa.org.uk/about_stainless_steel.php?id=31
I gather Zeppelins contained aluminium as did the engine of the Wright Flyer.
Skipping a few …
The Internet is an interesting one. Yes, it was crated by the US military as ARPANET but it was based on the existing technology of packet switching that had been invented in the UK. Also, hardly anyone used the Internet prior to web pages becoming available. The “World Wide Web” is based on HTML that was invented by Tim Berners-Lee.
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Yes. Individuals invented things which went nowhere until governments and Royalty funded them. Like Harrison’s chronometer. Even the atom bomb. Would we have ever developed nuclear energy without WW2? 30% of women died in chilbirth until the Crimean war taught the value of cleanliness in hospitals and doctors washing their hands. The death toll was terrible but from wounds and disease.
Conflict engenders rapid change.
The waste of the last 30 years on windmills and solar panels is incredible. Trns of thousands of scientists researching nothing. One trillion dollars a year. 250,000 windmills only in rich countries with plenty of power. Green Madness without purpose. As much use as the pyramids.
War has provided the impetus for most developments and the funding.
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My favorite story was the invention of the punch card driven silk weaving machine in Lyon, France. It ended up in a museum as the workers did not want or need it. Sixty years later the city was in dire straits as the customer for fine silks had been executed in the revolution. Napolean required km of new woven silks for his coronation but all the skilled workers were gone too. They dragged the machine out of the museum and went to work, expanding the punch card system and creating what was probably the world’s first major NC machine, a mechanical computer. The inventor was long dead but the idea lived on. Similarly with the invention of petrol in the 1840s, useless and very dangerous product of fractioning until some madmen invented the car engine in the 1880s. Ideas on their own do not go anywhere. People hate change as with the Spinning Jenny. The army had to intervene when mobs started murdering early adopters. So the popular notion that good ideas have a life of their own and people will beat a path to your door are nonsense. Most inventors like most musicians and poets and writers usually died in poverty. Now they are all working on internet applications, so the music is lousy.
120
That’s customers, Napoleon etc. Typos. Sorry. The lyrics are also silly. At least Paul McCartney wrote about not another silly love song but the traditions of Gilbert and Sullivan, great music and great lyrics continue in the modern stage shows if not in popular music.
50
I think “the internet of things” will be horrific – having every device internet connected and able to be communicated with ( and monitored and controlled ) is abhorrent to a free society. As usual, the same people who want covenience over common sense will argue for it and love their paid-for tech bondage.
I also think that having a constant point source of microwave frequency RF in your house ( 2.4 Ghz wifi ) is pure lunacy – as the Russians seemed to show, its not so much the RF intensity as the constant exposure that does the damage over time.
Like all tech, it needs ot be evaluated over time, preferably 20 years+ before it can be deemed safe or not. I think we will see a big surge in brain & blood cancers over the coming 10-20 years, especially amongst young women.
I doubt anything on facebook is that important you need to have near real time monitoring of such stuff….
70
Not sure that radiation of this sort is likely to be damaging or significantly a source of cancer. Seven cosmic rays a second rip through every human being. Many houses in the mid West US have high Radon levels from the inevitable basement excavation. People are constantly exposed to background radiation and we seem to cope well. The actual damage from Chernobyl is amazingly low despite the scares. Then you get the many chemical triggers in everything we eat.
So it is likely that we are overestimating without evidence the potential for electromagnetic origins of cancers, as opposed to say chemical exposure. AIDS makes the implied case that without your good immune system, you would fall prey to many cancers. The key observation with the diagnosis of AIDS was that people would have a number of different cancers simulteaneously, which was not usual.
Then suppression of the immune system itself can also give rise to many simultaneous cancers, which means that your body fights cancers all the time.
The origin of cancers is the question but clearly there is more at work than just electromagnetism. Wear and tear as in Opera singers with throat cancer, chemical triggers with long term exposure and inherited poor resistance as with Azkenazi Braca gene all point to sources of cancer. There is no reason to vilify WiFi quite yet any more than radio or the 1950’s-2000 fear of X Rays from the 21kva TV cathode screens, especially colour screens.
50
Sorry, TVs went from 17kv with black and white to 21kv with colour. There was a real concern at the time. You were supposed to be more than a mininum distance from the TV, but who in the end cared much about that. I have never read of any evidence of harm, except brain damage from TV hypnosis and reruns of I Love Lucy.
60
I think the precationary principle is the best approach.
Logic says that bathing yourself in microwave band radiation all day in your home is kind of asking for trouble, thats just my opinion of course. They thought thalidomide was a good idea at the time. I recall use of radiation to treat ringworm ( my mum tells the story about treatment as a kid with radium bars…)
Time will tell, although the clusters of cancers in the RMIT building in melbourne where they had a phone antenna above it kind of makes a point.
40
On investigation the ‘cluster’ at RMIT was within statistical bounds random, though people like someone to blame when death is in fact an inevitable consequence of life. Cancer and heart disease are the big killers and increasingly treatable.
40
Yeah funny thing about statistically possible….I kind of liken it to one time while out duck shooting, a mates father said to him “dont move” and lowered the shotgun close to his foot and let one barrel off. He freaked out basically being shot at, however the reason was that the young lad was in fact standing on a brown snake, and the old man had the wherewithal to dispatch it in an abrupt manner….
Yeah look you could statistcially rationalize most things, for my money, prolonged microwave band RF and humans probably not a good idea…same reason I dont have any wifi gear in my house. I have a mate who used to do all the SAR ratings for phones….yeah, well…
41
If one really looks in to it, most of the innovation comes from the private sector, even during war time, although private firms were often contractors for military organizations.
I’ll use WWII radar as an example. The first operational radars were operated by the German Navy as early as 1937. These radars were invented and developed by private individuals; Hans von Willisen and Paul Erbschoel. These individuals were young (25 years old) self taught scientists who did not attend university. Their company was known as GEMA. Their radars, Seetakt and Freya were not only the first operational radars, but were the first coherent radar designs. Coherent Radar is a type of radar design that coherently regulates the sending and receiving of the pulses resulting in such features as Pulse Doppler and pulse compression, and phased array operation.
Microwave radar (a wave length of less than 33cm) was the brain child of a engineer, E McGaw, in the employ of Britain’s General Electric Company. There was a need to install air intercept radar in RAF night fighters. The smallest antenna that could be mounted was one with a diameter of 70cm. This in turn required an operational wave length of 10cm. McGaw realized that a magnetron would need to be used, so he designed a modified cavity magnetron based on the cavity magnetron invented by Randell and Boot at Birmingham University. Cavity magnetrons had previously been patented in Germany, Switzerland, and Japan. (I suspect there was some espionage that we will never know about involved).
McGaw employed a large oxide cathode which he knew about from the research of a French firm smuggled out before the fall of France. The important innovation was the innovation of “strapping”. Strapping was developed by another Birmingham University scientist John Sayers. Strapping made cavity magnetron operation more stable but also increased usable output from the GEC magnetron from around 5 kilowatts to as much as 40 kilowatts. The microwave technology was put to service for combating the U-boats operating on the surface at night. The meters wave length radar developed by the Royal Navy in house previously had proved useless for this task.
The British shared their microwave technology with the Americans during late 1940. In America the RAD LAB was set up as a part of MIT, but government funded. More money and personal were sunk into the RADLAB than the Manhattan Project. Only the B-29 project cost more money during WW2 than the US radar research and development program. However, all the important American radar innovations and radar systems during the war came from private firms such as Raytheon, Bell Labs, Western Electric…or from brilliant private scientists, such as Czech born Ivan Getting.
40
Yes, but public money made it all work. As the British discovered in their losing competition with tiny Holland, the Dutch system of stocks and bonds and a stock exchange and chancellor of the exchequer made the power of the public purse available to the crown. Thus the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which saw the introduction of these things to the British under William and Mary and the subsequent carving up of Indo China between the British and the tiny but powerful country of Holland. This created the British Empire. It was a commercial reverse takeover by the Dutch. Only the Irish went to war as it was also Catholic versus Protestant.
My point is that public money is enormous compared to private. However as you say, individuals and independent companies have the ideas. Rolls Royce could see the war coming and you would have to say as a business opportunity. The decision to develop the 27 litre Merlin V12 engine really saved England in the Battle of Britain. It was used in the Spitfire and Hurricane in the battle but also later in the the Lancaster, the wooden Mosquito and ultimately made in the US and powered the US P-15 Mustang, putting them all way ahead of the German aircraft despite the lack of metals at the time.
What is different about the unprecedented period of relative world peace for the 75 years since WW2 is that government money is going into windmills and solar farms, directly and indirectly. A huge and reprehensible waste. Private money is going into the internet, telephones, world trade. The worst example of public waste in Australia after the NBN is that the CSIRO is forced to investigate Climate Change, a purely political issue despite the existence of a Bureau of Meterology? Yes, the CSIRO has patents at a rough cost of $6Billion for each significant patent like the noise reduction one used in WiFi. It shows you that governments are lousy at research and in a country where almost all universities are public service run, a lot of money goes into University research and apart from Medical research, nothing comes out.
So we are left with kangaroo expert Flannery to tell us about CO2 driven Global Warming and the universities are silent, silenced by politics. Only retired professors dare speak out on the absurdity and wrongness of man made Global Warming. Someone should at least stand up and say that if CO2 cannot even change the temperature, it is beyond logic that it can produce every weather event, flood, drought, storms and even bushfires.
90
That’s the P51 mustang.
30
The aluminium/copper time-hardening alloy used in zeppelin frames was invented somewhere around 1900.
The real revolution with aluminium was two-file. First, the Bayer process to efficiently refine Alumina (Al2O3), from Bauxite, and then the discovery that cryolite (Na3AlF6) significantly reduced the melting point of Alumina thus making electrolytic aluminium production much cheaper, and easier. Both the Bayer, and Hall–Hérault processes were developed in the 1880s (more or less). Of course this wouldn’t be possible without the work by Faraday in the 1820s, and subsequent large scale power production methods.
Speaking of industrial chemistry, I think the Haber process (ammonia production) had a remarkable impact on humanity, given that it directly enabled fertilisers to be made cheaply, and easily.
40
two-fold…not two-file. sorry
10
I cannot find the reference, but … I have read that tar was originally produced as a manufacturing by-product, and was only used to surface roads as a way of getting rid of the stuff.
30
Well, it was tried as a marine coating to stop worms drilling into the wood or barnacles slowing down the ship. Not noticeably successful.
20
I’ve got titanium inserts in my gums TdeF and,as a consequence, my bridgework is much more comfortable than dentures. This is a result of Professor Branemark of Sweden discovering that titanium fuses with bone. So which war did that come out of Maaaaaaate?
30
No, I understand that was a total accident. The original screws were meant to be removable in general surgery but were found to bond perfectly with the bone. This was not expected. Screws had been used before but the substitution of titanium was in the obvious category. It is a wonderful progression in a natural path where people find better and better materials by serendipity. This is different to say stainless steel which was a battle over fifty years but credited to an accidental discovery by one man.
30
And the final breakthrough in the story of stainless was by a man trying to make a better gun barrel.
30
OK an awful lot of wonderful technical breakthroughs have occurred as a result of military-inspired effort but not exclusively so. Not by any means.
To get back to the top of this #3 thread, one of the points I was implying is that we have far more than the internet as a life-enhancing and enriching technical development. As much as I really do enjoy using the internet, I think that my titanium screw-based bridgework makes for much more enjoyment of life, for instance. I would hazard a guess that most recipients of heart transplants would also rate that kind of technological development as being even more important than the internet.
Getting back to stainless steel, the better half makes sure that I wipe the kitchen sink every now and then.
30
My point was that people come up with great ideas all the time. It needs impetus and funding to turn them into products. As the holder of many patents and a mad inventor, I know these things from experience.
The fact is that people really hate change, even when it improves their lives in the short term. Sinks used to be wooden and cleaning them was a chore. Plus polishing all the brass taps before stainless. Black Japanning the floors around the rugs before wall to wall carpets. Cleaning the pine tables. Chopping wood for the stove which also heated the water. I barely remember these things but modern materials like chrome, laminex, stainless and plastic coated metals changed our world. However the rate of change in war time is measure in weeks, not months or years. Madame Cliquot, the widow Cliquot (veuve) made a fortune selling French champagne to the Russians even while Napoleon was invading Russia. War makes money, changes social structures, introduces changes. It is a terrible thing but the resistance to change normally is enormous.
In war time change is an imperative, even for the roles of men and women. In Germany Hitler refused to allow women to fight until the very end, halving his army in fighting the Russians and the British. He was a male chauvinist in the extreme. The war changed society on all sides and was the real start of the emancipation of women. It meant Margaret Thatcher obtained an honours in Chemistry from Oxford and then a Degree in law part time and still had two children. She reached heights for women not possible before the war and the world was better for it.
20
Nice post graphic.
The developments in communication and electronics have been amazing. And the internet has played a key role.
Now Obummer is trying to give it to the UN, knowing that the UN could destroy an anvil; and would.
70
My immediate reaction was: yes, I would rather have a million dollars than the internet.
Then the thought occurred to me; I wouldn’t be able to buy my favourite gadgets or do any research about them, without the internet.
It’s true, living is a lot more fun with the internet.
80
The word that catches my eye as I read through these comments is “gadgets.” And that seems to be what is so important to many. So important, in fact, that they actually change their life styles and wrap them around not being with people instead of being with people.
The smart phone wasn’t developed to make people happy, it was a hook to pull them into a web where they have no privacy, no opportunity to be alone, and no sense of intimacy with friends. This “ad” is about smart phones, not the internet.
The internet is NOT smart phone technology, it is access to information, true, and so can a smart phone using it, but I have no use for smart phones. I can’t even begin to understand the mind that REQUIRES constant connectivity. I so enjoy being away from it, and people, and I also enjoy having it when I want it, as well as actually being with people, instead of connected to them. I can’t begin to express how it amazes me that people sitting in the same room will text each other rather than talk.
So the question, as expressed in the “ad,” really is would you give up your smart phone for a million dollars, since that is what is being pushed. My response is “in a split second.” The internet, which is NOT the same, is another story.
50
And there’s the dark side to all these riches of things we have available. But we do have free choice in the matter. I don’t have a smart phone. I have a phone I bought in 2008 that does all I need and I keep it. It’s a little careworn on the outside but there’s not a flakey key or a feature that doesn’t work. So we don’t have to be chained to our gadgets.
30
The smart phone was a truly private development, no government at all. Now it has replaced the whole library concept. I have fun just asking questions. Half remembered songs, videos. photographs. Google Earth. All with a commercial impetus surely, but the convenience is amazing. Google Translate. Goggle. The smart phone changes society and social interaction, although Twitter is well named. SMS and emails and Facebook though have changed every aspect of business and social interaction. Blogs. We cannot go backwards. All from the humble telephone on a single wire. Even the technology based on bulky ascii characters but with Gigabyte speeds and terabyte memory. Then you get the CPU and FPU speeds. The world has changed forever. It has little overlap socially even with the world after WW2 when few people even had a home phone. The development of the internet was the glue which held it all together and Amazon and Facebook introduced server farms, replacing the desktop. The question is whether anyone even owns the internet but the last thing anyone wants is the UN controlling it. It is not a benign organization.
80
Possibly the country utterly changed by the smart phone is China. I have heard there are 1.2 phones for every person and certainly know Chinese people with multiple phones. Sadly it seems to have replaced conversation in Chinese restaraunts where whole groups sit around looking at their phones instead of talking. You have to wonder who is more interesting than other people at the table and why they went out with such a boring bunch, but at least they have that in common. Maybe they are watching the weather radar?
30
Focusing one one aspect in your life is a trap, Leonardo da Vinci was a believer in the mind body and soul ideal where he would study, draw, cut stone, sculpt, oversee, reflect, socialise, he wasn’t the type that excelled in one area a balance of experience and practise is what’s needed to foster imagination.
80
TdeF,
And to end it all would be one solar sneeze!
A solar flare headed our way would cause a major reset to our technological progress. Probably put us all into a regression cycle for quite a while as a fight ensue between government centralizing control, the military, powerful elitist cliques, and public freedoms.
Are we ready for such an event?
80
You cannot be ready for such an event. Speak to the dinosaurs. 150 million years as the dominant life form without a single windmill and then gone in an instant. At the time mammals were insignificant scavengers but perhaps our temperature regulation systems and scavenging were better suited to the winter which came.
People do worry about the end of the universe when the sun will turn into a giant red ball and swallow all the planets. Why worry? Remember we carbon lifeforms, living on CO2 and breathing out CO2 are the essence of pollution. If we were gone, the planet would be saved. For whom exactly escapes me.
50
There isn’t a phone system that isn’t “regulated” so the way the phone has developed has to meet regulations. GPS in every phone says you always can be found. If you like that, or tend to wander off with your eyes closed and not know where you are, that’s great. You can think of a million ways to use that phone, perhaps, but every one of them are useful to those that want to know everything about you and to pigeonhole you into their categories. the conveniences of the phone will practically guarantee you won’t be without it, so anyone that wants to locate you can know where you are, be they cop, warrant server, old flame, stalker, or someone that just wants to punch you in the mouth, or worse. And with a half dozen sites on the web having all the information collected about you and made available for a fee, you might be surprised who might show up.
10
What I really want out of a phone is that it be a phone as in POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). One that I can place a call and receive a call by pushing only a few buttons. My trusty old ruggadized feature phone was very close to that but, alas, it was dying and had to be replaced.
I had a chance to get an iPhone 7s for next to nothing so I bit. Now it seems that I have uncounted ways to make a call and receive one. Each having their own sequence of touches, swipes, and many ways to make mistakes that will cancel the call. Thus it is not a very good phone. Perhaps somewhat useful in a pinch like a Swiss Army Knife but really doesn’t to anything really well.
It is not made better by being able to do tens of thousands of things sort of OK. Especially since each of those things have have their own buttons to touch, places to swipe, and countless ways of making mistakes.
I long for the days when a phone was a phone, a book was a book, and a movie was a movie. However, giving up the internet? No way! I have the bulk of the information of the world on line and only have to find the fraction of a percent of it that is both true and useful to me. Libraries are no longer required. I see that as a good thing.
The only thing the UN can be trusted to do is destroy modern technological civilization by regulating and taxing it to death.
50
Oops. That would be an iPhone 6s rather than 7s. Maybe if I can learn to like the 6s, in a few years I might get a 7s.
20
There is no technology so beneficial that the Libazoids will not turn it into a weapon of tyranny.
50
‘Libraries are no longer required. I see that as a good thing.’
Wow, I can’t agree with that. In fact I don’t know how much money would be worth giving up my (small town) library. A place for leisurely browsing shelves of books, finding gems in un-digitised local history, chatting with friendly, helpful staff. I get my hard, up to date information from the internet, but books and the library are pleasures that enrich life- like live music, art, and conversation. But then I’m probably no longer required either.
Ken S
70
Libraries are about what already has been said and done. That is not my focus. I make things that have never existed before to work it ways never thought of. Such things are not to be found in libraries.
In fact, they are not found anywhere until I invent and build them. What little information libraries would contain that would serve my current purpose, is too time consuming to find. By using the internet, I can find what I need, in seconds, without leaving my workshop.
I have all but lived in the stacks of large university libraries. I have read several large libraries worth of books, journals, classics, and publications. I remember much of the information I encountered and can likely derive what I don’t remember. Why then do I need a library to do more of the same?
Hence, I no longer require libraries to do what I do. I don’t have to and don’t want to spend the few remaining years of my life rehashing the same old same old, which is all that libraries can provide.
Your purpose is different. For you, they are necessary. I have no power nor authority to take them away from you. Go in peace.
20
But using an IPhone is too great a challenge making a call? Can’t have it both ways, dude.
For the record, without ideas, you can’t make anything. You prefer to read the internet – so do I when it comes to news, though I have to accept it with a pinch or two of salt – but for ideas, well, you get them from everywhere – including the library. And if you can find what you need on the internet “in a few seconds,” either you don’t need anything, since you know it all already, or you really aren’t looking for anything revolutionary. If you don’t know the past, you don’t know if you are making new or reinventing the wheel. And as for the bulk of your post, well, sounds more like you have smoked a few peace pipes, so go in peace yourself.
10
Ideas are not the problem. Ideas are a dime a hundred weight if not made real. Studying the history of how to make things that don’t work is a bloody waste of time. That is if your goal is success rather than failure.
I actually find it much easier to re-invent the figurative wheel rather than study the tens of thousands of figurative wheels that don’t quite match my requirements. I find knowing thousands of ways to fail is not at all helpful and gets in the way of becoming successful.
One properly starts with genuinely understanding ones goal in the full context of natural law, logic, and what exists. If I find a fundamental conflict, I know it won’t work without examining 10,000 years of failed attempts. If I find what I require doesn’t exist, I run my process and either find that it can’t exist or I have caused it to exist. Finally, I let the nature of my goal guide my efforts to a full and complete implementation that works or have terminated the effort very early in the process.
This I have done repeatedly many thousands of times during my professional life. As a consequence, I have done many things the so called experts failed to do or thought were impossible to do. Why then would I need to pay attention to other people’s failures?
Do a patent search on my name. There you will find an interesting sampling of end points derived from my work. All originally thought highly unlikely or impossible by supposedly more qualified experts.
Generally, why they fail is they focus on solving the problem without trying to understand the problem they are trying to solve in full context. They look for prospective solutions and try to pound their problem into submission with them. Since they haven’t really understood their problem, even if their solution works, they don’t know why it works and likely don’t even know that it worked. I don’t know a better way to fail than to do things this way. Again, why would I want to copy their methods that don’t work?
10
Lionel
In my experience the current generation of uni graduates are woefully trained in running a literature search. If it isn’t on cd it doesn’t exist seems to be the norm.
And a hell of a lot of relevant research was pre-cd. As in the vegetation management furore in Qld. One recent “scientific review” in that manages to omit a considerable body of existing research that would have negated their conclusions – but that wouldn’t have met that bingo call “Number 9 the party line”
Einstein must be bloody famous to even get a mention IMO.
20
If your passion is the past, there is no substitute for free access to large libraries. My passion is creating the future. For that, libraries are all but useless.
Libraries are about the past of who did what, how they did it, and opinions about why they did it. They are repositories of end results that can be true, false, useful, useless, fact, fiction, or fantasy. They contain information but not knowledge until someone acquires the information and can make use of it.
I agree that many of the “new kids on the block” haven’t a clue about the above and would be at a total loss about what to do with access to the stacks of a large library or even a small one. If there isn’t an app for it, it doesn’t exist for them.
20
Lionel
I’d argue that there is where you find a hell of a lot of things that have been tried and didn’t work.
So if you’re “creating the future” you ought to have knowledge of that
So you can produce a better approach to what has been tried previously but didn’t work then for various reasons
Or come up with a better idea – which may also be subject to the above when you try it
20
There are vastly more ways to make things that don’t work than there are to make things that do work. You could spend a lifetime learning what doesn’t work and get absolutely nowhere. If that is your goal, be my guest and leave me out of it.
10
Another Ian September 20, 2016 at 7:21 pm
“I’d argue that there is where you find a hell of a lot of things that have been tried and didn’t work.”
Ian, Lionel, I have many, many, personal “Aw Sh*ts” in my collection. As I age, I become willing to share. For you my special friends, I offer “very good price on large lots”!
[Editorial discretion applied] Fly
00
I appreciate the points made in the comment above; especially the point about working a problem from the ground up.
I do, however agree with Ian’s point that reviewing all the research can be a good way of quickly assembling a base of understanding for a problem.
Of course it depends on the problem but I don’t think your ideas are mutually exclusive, it depends on the task at hand.
KK
00
Ah!..POTS.Life was simpler then . .
You can tell I’m getting old!!
GeoffW
30
Getting old is a lot better than not getting old. The good/bad thing is that we remember the “good old days” because we lived them. They might seem better to us because we simply assumed the bad things were just the way things were and continued doing and living in spite of the hardships.
My memory of POTS ca 1944: Our phone number at the time was 13. We had a wooden box on the wall with bells and a crank. We would lift the ear piece out of its fork, crank the crank, and speak into the mouth piece to tell the operator who we wanted to speak with. She would make the connection. She could also tell you the time of day or if the schools were closed because the snow was too deep and many other useful things.
Today we don’t have operators, we have voice response systems who can’t understand what you are saying beyond one, two, or three. They don’t offer the option you really want: to be able to talk to a real live human being who can understand what you are saying and give a coherent response. Is this is really better than the “good old days”?
I am not so sure of that but we don’t have a choice. We have learned that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Thus we do as we always have, accept what is and keep on keeping on in spite of the hardships.
20
The message is deeper than just the Internet. We live in the wealthiest nations on Earth because we allowed people to find products and services that other people would want and would voluntarily pay for. Of course the inventor of the better mousetrap got rich. And so did all of us. And these days, tragically we’re hell bent on destroying it all.
And when the headstone on the grave of our prosperity is put in place it will say, “They did it to themselves.”
110
I do suspect, however, that my wife might be willing to pay me a million dollars to give up the Internet. It does get addicting now and then. 😉
70
Or she could take a hammer to your router (a few seconds work) and keep the money 🙂
40
Ian,
I could wish she had that much money. I might let her destroy the thing and we’d take off for Hawaii or any number of other places and tour the world.
But please don’t give her ideas. 😉 The router belongs to the ISP, not to us and I don’t think they would like its destruction.
I suppose that after a period of time its ownership would pass to me simply because they would have no good use for its being returned, having replaced it with a “better” model they send out when you sign up. But in the meantime, we can’t even get the onscreen TV listings or Netflix on our TV without that router. The set top boxes are on the 192.168.1.0 private network and they have DHCP assigne IP addresses. Nothing works without that box sitting on the back of my desk with its little blinking green lights.
On the other hand, I’m hard put to see how anyone could make a router any more complicated than this one — something for everyone but no way to keep myself invisible on the Internet. So I don’t know what a better one would even be. I’m almost regretting that I ever bothered to learn as much of it as I did. 🙁
00
I work in IT, however I value doing stuff in the physical world like hiking, welding etc.
What irks me is that the internet can be a massive timewaster – it provides a 1000 ways to avoid actually doing real stuff.
Cyber bullying? Easy – get a court order and visit the offending childs parents with a police enquiry, job done.
Kids with poor behaviour? Remove the computer, force them to go on hikes and spend time playing sport.
Cant keep up with your email? Get another job.
Boss rings you at home all the time? Turn off your phone. Get another job.
This stuff is straight forward, we try and be too clever and make it too complicated….
50
Steve
“The Internet: The Information Highway”
Except, IMO, that it is more like a bad wheat crop – some grains but a hell of a lot of chaff.
40
The original quote from Emerson is this: “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse trap than his neighbors, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”
A nice sentiment, but, as a holder of a trademark, two patents, and numerous copyrights, I can assure you it’s mostly drivel. Today, the author, preacher, or inventor must spend a fortune on publicity, marketing, and advertising to even have a chance of recouping his investment. And I didn’t even mention insurance.
50
And still businesses start in garages and basements then go on to be highly successful. I’m tempted to repeat something else here, not because it’s particularly inspired or inspiring but because it’s true, “Money begets money.” The more you have the easier it is to make more. And that’s why we should never try to have a totally free capitalist system. It needs something to keep the playing field level for everyone. So I’m sympathetic with your complaint. And frankly, right now some of the big players need to be trust busted. They are hurting smaller guys who don’t deserve to be hurt.
But I think it’s still the better mousetrap that people go out looking for and will buy. And that’s certainly true for me. I just define better mousetrap a little differently than some. If I have options for something I want, for instance my last A/V equipment purchase, a Blu-Ray player, I look for quality first and then price. And I found what I think is one of the most versatile pieces of A/V equipment available. It was to replace a Sony X33ES CD player, one step down from top of the line at the time, for which I paid $550 in 1990. The additional Blu-Ray and other capabilities were a bonus. What I bought cost me $500 and plays any disk I could ever hope to have, at least any disk available at the time it was designed and a lot of other features I didn’t even know about until I started reading the manual.
I could have gotten a Blu-Ray player for as little as $75, I know because I went out looking. I pity anyone who bought one expecting it to last because they were cheap junk, they were fly-by-night brands that I see here today and gone again tomorrow. But that option is there for those who want it — internally so complex that not many people can begin to imagine what they get for that $75 — it’s completely taken for granted. But it’s the better mousetrap even at $75.
20
Yes, high insurance because there are too many lawyers. We have to have perfectly safe devices because apparently we are too stupid to keep our fingers and toes out from whirling machinery.
How many inventions never came to be because of this?
10
I worked for a lab equipment manufacturer that wanted to sell in the EU as well as the U.S. If you think U.S. safety regulations are bad just try the EU. They dictate what you have to do right down to the color of the pilot light in the power switch and lead free solder and you had to sign a certification that in fact you had used lead free solder throughout (which is a good idea but hardly the emergency it’s been made out to be).
00
Capitalism despite all its faults is a whole lot better than socialism. Too bad the leftists don’t see it that way.
90
What can you expect when a Leftists longest attention span is 140 characters on Twitter?
92
Is that a pre-requisite for being a socialist? Controllable via twit-ter?
51
Its generally known that the left made the twittersphere their own and to great advantage.
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
40
True but much worse than that they have made the ABC their own propaganda personal machine using our tax money. In decades to come people will look back at this time and wonder how could a so called Liberal/NP government continued to fund a major public broadcasting station that’s acting as the propaganda machine of the socialist left? I wonder that today.
40
Overwhelmingly the people think the ABC is fair and balanced, so politicians are reluctant to touch it in fear of a backlash. The left twittersphere is full of auntie’s attack dogs and they can do an immense amount of damage.
30
The interesting/disturbing thing about Socialism is that the people most interested in supporting it are usually the ones with the least actual personal stake in the issue.
If you look at your basic Marxism concept it is sold as a class struggle between the faceless and cruel ‘owners’ and the oppressed ‘workers’. There was also the ‘owner/workers’ (aka Small business owners) who Marx predicted would cease to exist, but basically it was evil owners vs oppressed workers.
Except Marx and his little friends where neither. Marx didn’t employ anyone and in the traditional sense of the word he didn’t do any work either. Yet he still wanted the system to become utterly reformed.
Marx, and by extension most of his followers, were not successful enough to own and too lazy to actually work, but still demanded that everything must change so that they could get a slice of the pie. This selfishness and jealous greed becomes worse when you remember that Marx and friends had little to lose. They didn’t have factories and businesses that might be destroyed. They didn’t need to maintain their jobs in order to support their families. If the revolution failed then all the little BoHos could just go back to their ideas discussion groups and try again next year.
Socialism kids, is all about jealousy and greed from people who have been unsuccessful in life.
82
That might also apply to politics in general.
Remember though that at the time Marx, there were the workhouses and life as a farmhand as your only two work choices and often that was not a choice, not for the serfs of Russia anyway. You did not own land or have an income. The landed gentry really meant something. Marx collective solution was about taking control of the factories.
What Karl did not see, could not see was the revolution of ww2 where people obtained good wages and then the factories continued to produce consumer goods. We have experienced in the West some 75 years of a consumer revolution never before seen. People even have annual holidays! All an impossible dream before WW2. So many countries were devastated by WW1 and then the Great Depression of 1928. Life was incredibly tough but Germany showed what could be done, for all the wrong reasons. To drive the people, they were promised free holidays on the Baltic in giant holiday camps and a free car, the peoples’ car, the volkswagen. What they could not know was that it was all lies.
Yes, it was called the National Socialist party, all working together for the common good. Just a lie like what became of Communism, which started with the best of intentions.
40
The Fund for American Studies video points out the role that the rich have in developing products that eventually make their way down to middle class minions like myself. I agree with what is said in the video and would like to make some additional comments.
Having a wealthy class in a capitalistic system is necessary in order to create improvements that occur in all our lives. And I have no problem with that as long as the rich get there wealth through their own hard work, innovation and better judgement.
When an innovator has a better idea, they need capital to move that idea forward. These startup companies need the rich to fund their ideas to a point where they can be made available to the market.
What would happen to innovation if the federal government taxed personal income at a 90% tax rate? Where would the seed money come from for startups whose ideas and innovations improve all our lives?
If the federal government lowered the tax rate on individuals and corporations, wouldn’t all our lives be improved through the increase in capital made available and the subsequent innovations that would then be created?
If a doctor has an idea that could cure MS, Parkinsons, or Cancer, but can’t get the money to move that idea forward; don’t we all lose?
The argument that can be made from this thought is that “taxes” are a negative force in creating improvements that could help all of us. When the government takes money from it’s citizens, it is denying them advances in medicine and other technologies that could have been discovered using the capital taken/stolen from them through taxes.
What advances we do get from government research come at a much greater cost. Governments (even in a capitalistic system) are socialistic.
As we have seen through experiments in communism and socialism taken by other countries, innovation dies as soon as capital for new ideas is taken away or the incentive for wealth is taken away. Bright inventive individuals are not interested in developing their ideas if there is no benefit for themselves.
As soon as Cuba moved into the communistic sphere, it’s economy and innovation froze in place. Visiting Havana is like walking back into the “50’s”. Compare Cuba’s economy to where capitalism was embraced like Taiwan, Japan, Korea etc. Comparing East Germany to West Germany is a perfect example of how socialism denies it’s citizens.
And yet, there are those who think socialism is a gift.
40
Only those who think they have a right to have (power, wealth, authority, and the like), without thought, effort, or responsibility for the consequences look upon socialism as a gift.
Those who know that there is no such thing as a free lunch and who take responsibility to earn their lunch, know they are the one’s who are going to be paying for all the free lunches. If this is allowed to continue,both the makers and takers are soon reduced to below a subsistence level of living.
See any socialist experiment past or present for instructive examples. The takers act on the assumption that there always will be makers to provide the stuff they take. The takers take until the makers either can’t or will no longer make. After which the grand collapse happens.
70
Maybe the US just wants the UN to be self funding as most of the costs are currently paid by US taxpayers?
It just might be an alternative to a carbon tax to pay for those first class flights, limousines, New York apartments and
helicopters.
However knowing the UN, they will immediately apply their communist agenda to it, banning Google, censoring Facebook
and rewriting Wikipedia and the history of the world. No, the UN must never get control of the internet. It would immediately
turn the world into a single communist state. There would be no privacy, no intellectual property rights and censorship
by unelected opportunists.
50
most of the costs are currently paid by US taxpayers
and,
Maybe the US just wants the UN to be self funding …
It appears that only Obama and his closest pals want to transfer the internet to the UN, and regardless of that, US taxpayers will still pay.
When the UN is self funding, everyone will be poor except for those born in blue & white, the new Tyrian purple.
40
Not at all. UN officials will sit down with the CEOs of Google, Facebook, and [[snip] Wikipedia]. All will smile, nod heads, and they will be welcomed on board and asked to remain on-message. Google is already a leftist organization, and FB is not far behind. [[snip] Wikipedia] has already rewritten history (Read what they say about the communism originally practiced at Jamestown Colony, for example.)
[On second thought, I will approve this with a snip.] AZ
41
The definition of fascism is when private companies do the role of govt in many areas….as such…
20
The Internet – communication and freedom for everybody
Would I give up the Internet ?
The answer has to be a resounding NO !!
It is where the next revolution (probably already happening) and elevation of the individual’s rights over government overreach, duress and suppression will take place.
and it would mean Jo’s Blog would be taken away , and that is something which is totally unacceptable !
40
You beat me to it with that thought.
I think my confidence in my sceptical position would have been squelched if I’d been denied access to Jo’s site and had to rely on the MSM reports
. So thank you Jo for also finding the internet, and using it so successfully.
Cheers,
Dave B
30
Off topic, except that the internet allows anybody to access more information than you can shake a stick at. This demands an intellectual discipline that is possessed by far more than the elite can imagine. But I digress. of the many recent explosions in the USA none will have the impact of this one;
http://www.thegwpf.com/new-report-refutes-epas-co2-endangerment-finding/;
Not having the training in US Law of Rud Istavan, it looks to me as though the USA EPA may be about to be required to defend the CAGW narrative in a court of law.
Is it possible that the debate (which is over – but never happened) is about to take place?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
The point being – it does not matter who is in the dock.
40
gwpf? What David Evans told us 10 or so years ago. So where would we have been without David?
Scopes? One hurdle yet. Who owns the judge?
20
The internet is a double edged sword, so I pose the question, would the AGW nonsense be so readily accepted without the interwebs?
Also, because of our dependence at all levels, imagine a hostile agent crashing the system of a sovereign state. It would have the impact of being poked in both eyes with a burnt stick.
China and Indian have come to the party late, but in the past decade there has been a sharp jump.
https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=it_net_user_p2&idim=country:CHN:IND:USA&hl=en&dl=en
40
The cost of the irony and stupidity found on the internet is worth the $million entrance fee …
France bans plastic cups, plates and cutlery to combat Global Warming
Perhaps the ban on cars wasn’t working out so well …
30
The sharp rise in China a decade ago only came about because Beijing mastered filtering, otherwise they ran the risk of a people’s revolution. Any dissent can now be crushed immediately.
https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2005/Internet_Filtering_in_China_in_2004_2005
30
… and we know on this blog what it feels like to be filtered, key words caught in the claw because of Section 18c. Self imposed censorship naturally follows and everyone becomes politically correct.
40
The internet is so much fun. It allows the quick spread of knowledge, and just as fast, the identification of fraudulent practice – although as several commentators have pointed out, it takes almost 10 times as much effort to debunk the fraud as to create it.
Here is an example of the fun: Don Aitken’s review of the latest from Stephan Lewandowsky, Michael E. Mann, Nicholas Brown, Harris Friedman titled “Science and the Public: Debate, Denial, and Skepticism”:
http://donaitkin.com/the-distinction-between-true-scepticism-and-denial/
As Don points out, although the title and the abstract both indicate that the article is intended to define the difference between denial and skepticism, it never does.
For those who want to read the original paper, it can be downloaded here:
http://jspp.psychopen.eu/article/view/604/html
[Thanks for the tip. :- ) – Jo]
10
I’d take the million. And I would expect to be able to get the internet back for less in the not too distant future. Maybe by then we’d have a better service.
20
But Ted, what if they could enforce the “for ever” bit? Even at my age that would be too long for me. This site, wearher radar and forecasts, and emails give me an immediacy I value, and the ability to watch the video above is a new pleasure since I got the NBN speed and data allowance.
Cheers,
Dave B
10
In terms of wealth, we have access to things that the richest King of ancient times could never have dreamed about. We can communicate across the globe; have access to information; have access to life-saving medical treatment and pain relief; can travel to the other side of the world in less than a day; and can live much more comfortably than the King with an army of servants.
A few years ago Martin Wolf in Why Globalization Works stated that the average person in a rich country was about the 250 times richer in nominal terms, or 35 times richer in real terms, than the average person in the poorest countries, or in Britain in 1700.
20
The prospect won’t likely arise,
And would come as a mighty surprise,
That a million dollar gain,
Awaits those who refrain,
From the Net, for the rest of their lives.
61
From the comments opening this thread:
… what some regressives fear so much
Pleasing to see the use of the word regressive – a more accurate description than the self-chosen “progressive”
Whenever anyone uses the words “progressive” or “elite”, they are reinforcing the framing of the debate (such as it is) by the leftoids. When they use those words to describe themselves, they mean that any who disagree with them are regressive and redneck.
Don’t play this semantic game with them. Remind them that they are regressive and impenetrably vain.
40
Maybe a “take the money” quote here?
“Here is the guy who wiped Hillary’s server asking about how to do it on Reddit. Yes. Seriously. He also asks how to replace real emails with fake ones.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/09/when-a-clinton-.html
31
Many politicians would give more than that to shut it down to enable them to lie with much more chance of not being found out & also confuse the electorate to a greater extent.
Clinton springs to mind along with the Greens!
20
no, not for a million, or even trilions!
18 Sept: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Crib notes: Climate Week NYC, migrants and 1.5C
Ban Ki-moon will host the big political moment at UN headquarters on Wednesday, when leaders of around 20 countries are expected to ratify the Paris Agreement…
Myriad events on the sidelines – see the full listings here (LINK) – will muster coalitions of the willing in every sector, from waste management to high finance…
We’ve brought together a couple of great panels on financial innovation Wednesday 2-6pm, in partnership with the World Bank. Join us (LINK), if you’re in town, or livestream the sessions here (LINK)…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/09/18/crib-notes-climate-week-nyc-migrants-and-1-5c/
21 Sept: ClimateWeekNYC: Rockefeller Brothers Fund: Trillion Dollar Transformation: Fiduciary Duty, Divestment & Fossil Fuels in an Era of Climate Risk
The financial risks are particularly pertinent for pension fund investments which, by their nature, are long-term investments. Many are made over the same timescales during which significant increases in the physical impacts caused by climate change are expected. Beyond the actual devastation caused by climate change, many of these investments are subject to increased financial risk, for example clean renewable energy is increasingly outcompeting fossil fuels on price; policymakers continue to implement policies to combat climate change to meet their obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement, and as yet unknown technological innovations prepare to enter the market.
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has teamed up with Mercer to produce two forthcoming reports: one on the legal requirements facing pension fund trustees as fiduciaries regarding the assessment of climate risk; and the other on the financial case in support of assessing climate risk in institutional investor portfolios.
Together with Wallace Global Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and DivestInvest Philanthropy, we invite you to join us for a preview and a high-level discussion into this emerging research that incorporates expert and industry perspectives on the fiduciary duty implications of investing in a time of climate change.
This event will include presentations by: DETAILS
The event will be facilitated by Tom Kruse, Program Director for the global governance portion of the Democratic Practice program, Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
http://www.climateweeknyc.org/events/trillion-dollar-transformation-fiduciary-duty-divestment-fossil-fuels-in-an
11
At least 55 countries are required to ratify Paris 2015 agreement.
Climate of humiliation. 50 out of about 200 countries MAY ratify climate accord this week.
Paris climate deal won’t likely be ratified this week during UN meeting:
UN expects nearly 50 countries to have ratified new global pact to slash fossil fuel emissions by 21 September
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/09/16/un-20-more-countries-ready-to-ratify-paris-climate-deal/
. . .
Will they still make an announcement?
21
Under supermarket floors are cable channels for all the cash register wires only 18″ wide but are truly ratified! Two beedy hungry red eyes looking at you, then also his girl friend!
20
Thanks Pat,
Is that why the Turnbull is in NY?
Cheers,
Dave B
20
A quote very applicable to “climate science”.
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Mark Twain.
40
K-A-R-M-A? read all:
19 Sept: HeatStreet: Infamous Lecturer Who Trashed Sir Tim Hunt Has Her Course Axed
by Lukas Mikelionis and Heat Street Staff
EXCLUSIVE: UPDATE
After repeated stonewalling, City University London has now ADMITTED in a statement that Connie St. Louis “Science Journalism” course was so unpopular it had to shut down.
Their statement reads:…
http://heatst.com/world/has-the-infamous-lecturer-who-trashed-sir-tim-hunt-had-her-course-hours-cut/
40
I think he’s beautiful
10
Having just read an interesting book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.All of the developed nations
Industrial development -transport,medicine,agriculture,sewage treatment ,clean drinking water and
iPhones and the Internet(“what have the Romans done for us?”) has come from -reliable-scalable-cheap energy ie fossil fuels -“polluting” CO2 has literally a lot to answer for.So when greenie hypocrites don’t practice what they preach in reducing their carbon footprint in any of the above
Technologies it just makes me laugh except they also want deny such things to developing countries.
Mike travelling in India
30
OT but great news – John Cook joins the George Mason University! 😀
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1102608159466&ca=d5965069-aa1a-4220-b822-8008bb53b34b
Lewandowsky – gone!
Cook – gone!
Now we need to find a country that needs a marsupial paleontologist for one of their university faculties. 😉
61
Flummery was on TV this morning talking about coral bleaching, with the dams all full he is moving sideways.
It may give him a few more years until the little critters return home and replenish the reef, after a cluster of La Nina.
50
I would be hopping mad!
30
The man is a glutton for punishment.
20
That doesn’t say much for George Mason Uni.
KK
30
KK
They’ve got a few other problems at the moment, like Shukla IIRC
40
Amazing. Is it possible to buy auditors; surely not.
But then what are we crowing about in Australia.
Shukla was only a million for that year; how much did Julia dispense on our behalf to the Clinton Climate Catastrophe and Children Philanthropic Fund.
KK
20
KK,
Let’s not forget that Enron found it only too easy to buy big piece of Arthur Anderson, one of the best accounting firms in existence up until the fraudulent auditing was discovered.
Enron may not have gotten a lot of attention in Oz but it was a blockbuster here. You really can buy auditors.
10
Thanks for that Roy.
I had a suspicion that you could.
I had heard the name Enron, but only as a headline and never got into the full gorey detail.
I’m not going to look it up but Julia “donated” either 20 million or 200 million to some dodgy group and nobody batted an eyelid.
Some are above auditors.
10
Teleportation has arrived.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-20/teleportation-of-light-particles-across-cities-breakthrough/7853860
10
For you’ my special friend’, such a good investment!!!
30
Much amusement, we are not quite there yet.
10
It’s clever and profound. It appears that one is transporting matter!
But in reality it’s a transportation of information or energy?
Someone please enlighten me.
GeoffW
20
I’ve the same question, what in the world are they talking about? It looks like they’ve done something new with fiber optic cable but photons moved along fiber optic cable isn’t exactly new.
00
Heck Yeah. Anyone want to take me up, post here and we can do business.
Hint:- New Boat, deposit for kids house/flat, bit of a hol, top up super and retire, gardening walk dosg, go sailing, cuddle grand kids.
If I get bored I’ll open a coffee van and hire out cattle prods to people who want to play Go Poke a Moron. Now that will be a killer app!
20
PS
a) dogs not dosg
b) Tasers on Sundays. Free coffee and private cublicle for those opting te shot in the arse with a taser by yourpartner with free nappy to avoid embarrassment.
20
Please tell us more about, “Go Poke a Moron. Now that will be a killer app!”? Do your prods come in a choice of colors? Do we have to chase them, or just point in a barrel? The profit angles here could amaze even the banksters! Like entropy, stupidity can only increase!
20
19 Sept: WaPo: Jason Samenow: Is the media scaring the public too much about climate change and extreme weather?
The media has gone overboard in calling attention to links between climate change and extreme weather, contend two scholars in the United Kingdom…
The hype is responsible for a counterproductive and paralyzing “atmosfear,” they claim.
But their contention of a media-induced “atmosfear” goes too far…
In their provocative analysis in the journal Weather, Climate and Society, Vladimir Jankovic and David Schultz of the University of Manchester raise some valid points worthy of consideration. The most important point they make is that the overwhelming majority of damage from extreme weather results from people and property in harm’s way — not climate change…
However, what the authors gloss over is that our atmosphere is fundamentally changed because of increasing greenhouse gases, and the effects on certain types of extreme weather are real. We can’t ignore this. It would be irresponsible for journalists to omit this very important aspect of the climate change story…
They argue, correctly, that stopping climate change won’t stop extreme weather and worry the public will be surprised if, after climate policies are implemented, extreme weather keeps happening…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/09/19/is-the-media-scaring-the-pubic-too-much-about-climate-change-and-extreme-weather/
12 Aug: Weather, Climate and Society: Atmosfear: Communicating the Effects of Climate Change on Extreme Weather
In reality, recent increases in damages and losses due to extreme weather events are due to societal factors. Thus, invoking atmosfear through such approaches as attribution science is not an effective means of either stimulating or legitimizing climate policies…
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0030.1
10
???how funny!
19 Sept: NYT: Cecilia King: U.S. Signals Backing for Self-Driving Cars
WASHINGTON — Federal auto safety regulators on Monday made it official: They are betting the nation’s highways will be safer with more cars driven by machines and not people.
In long-awaited guidelines for the booming industry of automated vehicles, the Obama administration promised strong safety oversight, but sent a clear signal to automakers that the door was wide open for driverless cars.
???“We envision in the future, you can take your hands off the wheel, and your commute becomes restful or productive instead of frustrating and exhausting,” said Jeffrey Zients, director of the National Economic Council, adding that highly automated vehicles “will save time, money and lives.”…
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/technology/self-driving-cars-guidelines.html?_r=0
11
20 Sept: ABC: James Bullen: Climate change could shrink habitat of 90pc of Australia’s eucalypt species
It may be harder to spot a mountain ash in parts of Australia’s mountains or some species of mallee trees in the outback within 60 years as climate change causes the range of many species of eucalypts to shrink or even disappear entirely, new research suggests…
“We looked at the distribution of the eucalypts, where they are nowadays, and where they would possibly be given the climate change scenario, in 60 years,” said study co-author Associate Professor Bernd Gruber of the University of Canberra…
The research, published in Nature Climate Change, is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s intermediate emissions scenario, where emissions peak in 2060 and reach 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100…
Dr Gruber said the loss of trees in some areas was likely to have a knock-on effect on other parts of the environment.
“If your tree disappears, some insects will disappear, and then probably some birds will disappear. It won’t be only a shift in trees, it will be a shift in the biodiversity of Australia overall,” he said.
“There will be a homogenisation of the biodiversity of Australia … it will be a bit more boring.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-20/climate-change-could-shrink-habitat-of-90-pc-of-eucalypt-species/7858382
20
19 Sept: AAP: Sarah Motherwell: Conservationists appeal Adani challenge
Indian mining giant Adani has dismissed an appeal by the Australian Conservation Foundation to stop its Carmichael coal mine as yet another attempt by a “loud minority activist group” to spend years in court.
The Federal Court last month threw out the ACF’s challenge to stop the $21 billion mine slated for Queensland’s Galilee Basin from going ahead…
The ACF on Monday lodged documents in the same court seeking to appeal to its full bench, which is made up of three judges.
ACF president Geoff Cousins said there was no doubt the foundation represented the concerns of the majority of Australians.
“The science is clear that we can have coal or the reef – but we can’t have both,” Mr Cousins said in a statement…
Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche also slammed the appeal and hoped the first thing the court would do is make ACF prove it could pay the costs of another failed court action.
“ACF’s argument flies in the face of this reality and is the equivalent to ACF demanding that Saudi Arabia should take responsibility for emissions coming from the exhaust pipes of Australians’ cars using Saudi oil,” Mr Roche said…
A hearing date for the appeal is yet to be set.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/qld/a/32661739/conservationists-appeal-adani-challenge/
10
Good to see the word “regressives” (meaning people who think they are part of the “progressive left”, but are not really progressive, for example, they give cover to some of the most regressive, religious parts of Western societies) here.
Increasingly, the Climate Change Community is associated with the regressive left (feminists, social justice warriors and some [religions]), and this association won’t help it.
Climate Change is a Racist Crisis!
[Rod, hopefully you won’t mind the minor edit to avoid an 18C problem.] ED
31
After wading through over 100 comments above I would, if asking the same question as Jo use a slightly different wording.
Would you give up the “printed word” for a million bucks?
The arguments posted above on the various aspects of the Internet and its use could have been used almost directly on the outcomes of Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable cast metal type and the subsequent printing of the “42 line Bible” now known as the “Gutenberg Bible” .
Wiki probably sums up then outcomes of Gutenberg’s invention of the cast metal lettering technology and its application in his printing press as good as anyone.
Without Gutenberg and his printing press there would be no Internet to argue over.
Without Gutenberg and his printing press, a little reading of the history of the times shows the enormous impact the printed tracts and political posters had on politics overall.
There would not be any Democracies or democratically elected parliaments that represent the voters, imperfect as they are still today.
Without Gutenberg and his printing press and the immense and rapid spread of knowledge resulting from the rapid dissemination of knowledge and the very new ability to spread individuals opinions and ideas and complaints across the breadth and depth of civilisation everywhere through the medium of the mass printed word there would not have been the Industrial Revolution which we are still in the midst of.
At best only small scale and stuttering version of the Industrial revolution would be under way today.
Without Gutenberg and his printing press there would still be Emperors and Princes and Dictators and serfs and constant injustice everywhere, each and everyone of them above any accounting for their various misdemeanors and faults and mistakes and cruelty and discrimination as well as being above any openly public reproach and criticism.
Without Gutenberg and his printing press there would be no Internet or World Wide Web to blame for every human fault.
We as a race are very far indeed from being the paragon of virtue re civilisation that we would like to be and a few souls out of their moral depth claim to be.
But Without Gutenberg and his printing press we would be a different race, still a harsher, crueler and far more backward race and peoples everywhere.
Without Gutenberg and his printing press the global population would still only be a couple of billions for the knowledge to grow the food and to support and feed and clothe and provide the energy for more than that number would not be available to the food producers across the planet.
I spent the first two thirds of my life without the Internet.
When I wanted to know some fact out of a myriad of facts or some Ag research outcome, it meant hours looking through encyclopedias or in the local library or in the local Grain Research Institutes library or on the phone for hours at a time to try and get information from tens and dozens of individuals.
Such as when I took on the oil companies in 1982 with the blessing of the National Farmers Federation, over the wax in diesel fuel problem that was destroying diesel fuel pumps on tractor and truck engines everywhere when the wax set solid in very cold frosty weather.
With myself missing just about all farm work for a month to round up the information to counter the oil companies, all 27 of them at the time.
Today a couple of days of googling and e-mailing and nearly all that information would be at hand.
Would I give up the Internet and all the world’s knowledge, corrupted, mixed up as it may be but still underneath , an immense store of Knowledge if one is smart enough to run a stiff personal filter through every thing you drag up on the internet.
Knowledge in all its imperfections that is now there at the click of a few buttons.
NO! Access to almost unlimited Knowledge even at my age is something that is almost beyond price.
A million bucks without the Internet won’t buy a tiny smidgin of the mass of knowledge and information that is there on the Internet and the WWW at a click of a button.
Besides with the Internet always there, one could with some application and a lot of luck make that million dollars via the Internet in any case.
Will we always have this unlimited access to the World Wide web and the internet as we know it?
Perhaps not but if not, then it will be that same Internet that will provide the information to get around and work around any restrictions and political strictures that others of a serious dictatorial bent might try and place on the internet.
And that same internet would possibly be used to overthrow of the information Dictators who will eventually find it is they and the nation they pretend to govern who will likely suffer the most from the lack of access to the global information highway called the Internet and the World Wide Web.
30
Ok! You have your million dollars and therefore given up all of your access to the Internet.
Now the question is;
Where on this planet are you now going to able to reside permanently that allows you to avoid ANY access at any level to the Internet or any communication and information systems that use the Internet so as to stay within the agreed criteria for your getting and keeping that million dollars.
Remembering that anything you do with that million dollars other than have the whole lot in hard folding Cash, will be using the internet in some way.
Food is ordered over the internet communication systems by the super market chains. So its down to growing your own food, all of it and making your own clothing from wool and cotton that you have grown and harvested and processed into yarn and hand sown all by yourself.
Of course you could knock over the odd polar bear if real quick and you are in those cold climes. And skin it and make your covering out of that.
Transport is easy in the Arctic situation away from the internet ;
You use frozen fish to make a sled.
The internet will tell you how to do that ; Damn, that bloody internet again!
Seeds for your vegies? Nope, you can’t order them from the seller over the internet . Nor buy them yourself as those seeds will have been through a whole purchasing and documentary process from grower to seller via the use of the internet.
Antarctica perhaps. No food so not much use for cash if nobody else is around to swap and trade with let alone having something that supports life to swap and trade with.
Siberia or Patagonia or the back blocks of Mali in Africa. They all seem to have at least the old flip top phones there and low level smart phones are becoming more common.
The lowest level phones are the used, traded in ones from the rich west .
But all those phones use the Internet system and WWW systems to get and use information and to gossip.
And if you do find somewhere that has no access to the internet in any way for anything, you probably won’t want to live there because you will be that damn lonely there all by yourself.
And besides what are you going to spend that million dollars on if nobody can access the internet to get sought after goods imported into that remote location?
10
BoM Fails: It’s deja vu all over again”
Who remembers the Brisbane Wivenhoe Dam release & unpredicted flooding of Brisbane 2011?
With predictions of permanent drought by the best BoM 97% scientists, water was stored with alarmist names like “Angry Summer” ringing in our ears.
The BoM failed then, and now, South Australia, Australia’s greenest state, who closed down all coal fired energy to stop such floods, feels the wrath of their green god Gaia.
Not only that, the green government transported water from the Murray river, at cost, only to release the water!
ABC: “But Water and River Murray Minister Ian Hunter defended SA Water’s actions.
He said SA Water worked with the Bureau of Meteorology to plan water allocation.”
. . .
What was the BoM advice that failed so catastrophically?
“Port Noarlunga resident and 891 ABC Adelaide caller Scott criticised SA Water for the timing of its release.
He said releasing water from the reservoir on the same day as heavy rainfall has caused a lot of damage in the area.
“Everyone that’s been down there would have seen where the dunes have been, never to come back, and they [SA Water] thought that that was the right day to do it?
“It’d be the equivalent of back-burning on like a 47C day, with spot fires on the hills and going ‘oh how did we lose some houses, how did this happen?’
A 100% green BoM science failure.
41
handjive – speaking of water –
***Israel seems to be offering help with more desal plants? just what we don’t need…
19 Sept: Jerusalem Post: Elkin: Israel should be part of Australian-led climate discussions
Israel should join a key circle of developed countries advancing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin told his Australian counterpart last week.
During a meeting with Australian Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg in Canberra, Elkin stressed that Israel should become a full member, rather than an observer, of the UNFCCC “Umbrella Group,” to reflect Israel’s commitment toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Due to Australia’s chairmanship role in the group, Elkin requested that Frydenberg help Israel upgrade its status as a permanent participant in the body, the Environment Ministry said on Monday…
While the Umbrella Group lacks a formal membership list, its participants usually include Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Ukraine and the US…
***While Israel can bring to the table experience in clean-tech and ***water technologies, Australia has extensive experience in introducing energy-saving policies, the statement said…
During the visit to Canberra, Elkin also met with various environmental bodies, in order to learn about how Australians handle some of the same challenges faced by Israel, such as coastal rehabilitation, sewage treatment and conservation, the ministry said…
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Environment/Elkin-Israel-should-be-part-of-Australian-led-climate-discussions-468130
20
NOTHING POLITICAL!
20 Sept: WaPo: Ben Santer/Kerry Emanuel: Scientists know climate change is a threat. Politicians need to realize it, too.
That’s why we and 373 other scientists have written a letter about what’s at risk.
The climate is changing in dangerous ways, and we are responsible for most of these changes. This is not a matter of conjecture or political opinion — it is the conclusion of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, based on solid evidence that mounts each year…
But these efforts to reduce the risk to future generations are now being imperiled by a small yet vocal group that denies the validity of the evidence and of scientific expertise in general. Of special and immediate concern is the stated intent of the current Republican Party platform and presidential nominee Donald Trump to promote the extraction and use of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels, to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement and to rescind President Obama’s executive actions designed to reduce climate risk. We are deeply concerned about the serious long-term damage to our world that would result if the climate and energy policy goals of Trump and the Republican Party were to become our national policies, reversing decades of progress on energy, climate, clean air and clean water. These consequences would be borne by billions of current and future citizens of this planet…
To address this concern, we — together with 373 other members of the National Academy of Sciences — have published an open letter today (LINKS TO LETTER WITH SIGNATORIES)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/20/scientists-know-climate-change-is-a-threat-politicians-need-to-realize-it-too/?utm_term=.4ccaaaae47c9
ResponsibleScientists.org: An Open Letter Regarding Climate Change From
Concerned Members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
On September 20, 2016, 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel laureates, published an open letter to draw attention to the serious risks of climate change…
A full list of signers follows the text of the letter…^ = letter organizer
10
handjive posted the original story on the following…now there’s a backlash!
20 Sept: UK Express: Alix Culbertson: EU under pressure to take action against France after it bans ALL plastic cups
EUROPEAN Union (EU) bureaucrats are being hounded to take action against France after its government banned plastic cups and plates…
But Pack2GoEurope, which represents Europe’s leading food-packaging manufactures, said the ruling goes against the EU’s free movement of goods law.
The industry association has demanded the EU Commission blocks the French law and is set to take legal action against the country.
Eamonn Bates, secretary general of the Brussels-based group, said: “Finding a package that meets the really critical food hygiene requirements that consumers want, that can also be composted in a domestic composter – right now they don’t exist…
There is still debate over whether the energy required to produce environmentally-friendly plastic is actually greener than alternatives…
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/712501/EU-pressure-against-France-ban-plastic-cups
10