Dantius

Originally Posted By: Triumph In the end, the troubles with population control just seem to keep... multiplying. Great, this is now going to be a meme. I feel dirty for perpetuating it now.

Originally Posted By: Master1 New copyright laws anyone? Good luck getting that through the US Senate. Look at the finance reform bill...

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet If we reduce our numbers through control of reproducion, then the "excess" people will just naturally die of old age - they can still potentially lead a satisfactory life, even have kids (though a limited number of them). You'd need every country to go along with it, though. If half the world isn't interested in signing on to a one-child policy, what are you going to do with them? Why a New World Order Illuminati world government, of course!

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Really? I can't remember that, and it's not on my list. Hm, it must have been Alorael then.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES The Ninjas Doom, I'm afraid you were not the first member here with "Doom" in your name. I can think of at least two others that preceded you. I'm also fairly sure that you used it or some variant thereof back when you were rotating you PDN's ala Alo.

Originally Posted By: Means and Ends Committee —Alorael, who thinks Romeo and Juliet is a fine play about teenage love. Yes, the problems could be solved with a dose of common sense, but there's a character there to fruitlessly deliver it. Teenagers!

Originally Posted By: Means and Ends Committee Cutting the birth rate to reduce population works, but even without eugenics it has issues. Aging populations can present substantial demographic problems. See also: Japan.

Originally Posted By: Triumph I have to keep resisting the urge to call this the Twilight Saga. I'm regretting this too, especially since Google seems to be running tons of Twilight ads on my site. Ah well, such is life.

Originally Posted By: Lilith i was going to say they're never witty but then i realised it read "librarians" and not "libertarians" Eh, Heinlein came close. And I found Atlas Shrugged hilarious, but that probably wasn't intentional on the part of Rand. Speaking of which I should really get around to reading Anthem, since I've heard it's actually a passable good novel.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Also, China's policy caused other problems that they are now grappling with. Eugenics becomes a much bigger issue when you are only allowed a certain number of kids. Plus, you get massive gender imbalance, and all the problems that that brings along (demographic shift, social friction, prostitution, forced marriages, wage issues, etc.)

Originally Posted By: The Ratt See the problem is there hasn't been a war or disease that's killed off hundreds of thousands of people in a while. That would probably help curb population growth. Fine, I'll get right on it. Let me just find my jackboots, armband, and control of a major power.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith Is it bad that I can barely understand something that was written for uneducated country bumpkins? Queen Elizabeth was a uneducated country bumpkin? Hey, you might have something to that theory! My favorites were Richard III, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. The onyl one I don't like is R&J, but only because it's sooooo overdone.

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet Famines are perhaps the most basic example of this - when environment's ability to produce food is not enough to support a population, said population will collapse. Similarly, I believe mankind is reaching the point where we must reduce our population to retain stability. We can do this in controlled manner, utilizing globalization, and unification of cultures it entails, to best effect, arranging global logistics so that all peoples are quaranteed some baseline of wellfare. Alternatively, we can fiddle our thumbs about it, and wait till internal conflicts of our species lead to forceful equilibrium - entailing war, famine and all manner of other disasters. I think you missed the entire point of biotechnology ever here. The Green Revolution and similar events has massivley increased the carrying capacity of our planet. I see no reason why this trend can't continue for a while...

Originally Posted By: botski Thanks, everyone, for the tips. I eventually had to cheat in that cave (which I now know is the WRONG cave) to kill everything. Is it me or does G2 seem to be totally digital as far as difficulty (I am playing on "normal") ? Digital meaning "really easy" or "really fricking hard". I find myself getting absolutely slaughtered in many, many encounters. When my battle alphas have a 10% chance to hit some floating eyeball with 800 hit points, what is a poor shaper to do but punt? It is stating to ruin the flow for me, reloading all the time. I might put it down and give G3 a try, or replay G1. Are you sure you haven't wandered into areas too high level for you? After doing the main Awakend lands, you should head to the southeast to Barzite lands and train up a bit/get new creations before attempting optional, very difficult dungeons.

Originally Posted By: Nioca Quote: 75% of people think that Nioca is organised Wait, let me fix that real quick... Quote: 75% of people wish to cause Nioca's demise via uncontrollable laughter. Though it's rather funny that my personally selected weak points and the opinion of the crowd miss each other entirely. Then again, there's only two negative votes, so there's not much to go on. Yeah, most of my positives are consistent, but my negatives are all over the place, and they don't even agree with my assessment. I knew we should be able to pick more than 6 option!

Originally Posted By: Actaeon I hate to sound like a complete hippie, but do you really think continued mining is the answer? Extraction, transportation... It's quite the endeavor, given the abundance of renewable resources on earth. I think someone already mentioned this, but solar's improving rapidly. The raw forces of the sun and the planet, if harnessed, would more than take care of all our needs with a lot less hassle than mining. If we're going to bank on vast improvement in technology, why not there? Myself, I suspect that we'll run oil into the ground and leave ourselves without enough energy to manufacture the necessary technology to move forward. I don't know of that's optimistic or pessimistic, in the long run. It's not being a complete hippy at all. The problem with solar/wind/geothermal energy it that you need to have a very advanced level of technology to pull it off. A solar panel is a delicate, complex, and finicky machine, and it requires a lot of energy to make one. Coal power, OTOH, requires essentially basic knowledge of structural engineering to build the plant, simple and easily obtainable materials, and some specialty components (generators, transformers, etc) that are much easier to mass produce than solar. So while solar energy is probably a pretty good alternative for the US, expecting China or India or Africa to suddenly make the switch to solar is beyond ridiculous. Running out of oil is not a problem for power generation, just for transportation. For example, nearly 85% of France's power is nuclear fission, not oil or coal. The only problem with nuclear is irrational public fear of meltdowns turning us green and giving us extra appendages. Blame that one on pop culture...

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Y'know, I haven't read all that much Shakespeare; also, I've only read Hamlet once and only watched one adaptation of it. But I'm having trouble thinking of a scene that I enjoyed more than that one where Hamlet and Polonius meet in the library. Both reading it and watching Mel Gibson and Ian Holm play it -- I don't know why I like it that much, I just do. My favorite Shakespeare play is Richard III. It's also the most recent one I saw, watched it about a year ago at the CST. I don't know why I like it so much, it's basically a piece of hack-job propaganda with little to no grounding in reality. But still, Richard's soliloquy at the beginning gets me every time.

Originally Posted By: Lilith also i don't see how mining other rocky planets helps with energy. there's not much you can do with abiotic rocks that has a positive EROEI ratio Well, for all we know, space travel in the next millennium could become cheap enough that the energy invested for a trip to, say, Venus would produce sufficient net energy to fall back into a worthwhile EROEI. Just because a planet is abiotic doesn't mean that it wouldn't have, say, deuterium or tritium or uranium or plutonium, all of which can be used to generate energy. Besides, we could always just harvest the energy from he sun somehow, perhaps something along the concept of a Dyson sphere? Remember, this will be millennia into the future.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter? Wait, did you just call Nikki a maggot? I'm confused...

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey I would like to point out that earth has a finite amount of resources. So no matter how energy efficient we make our technology, how environmentally friendly we become, or creative in extracting and recycling resources we get, their will come a point were if we continue to grow the earth can will not be able to sustain us. I've posted this in another thread, but I feel that if we're discussing energy, it should at least be mentioned in passing. Basically no, no we will not run out of energy. Even if fusion is infeasible, by the time we deplete all resources available on earth (which will take many thousands of years even assuming maximum projected growth), we should at least be advanced enough to mine the other rocky planets in the solar system, and after that there's always the asteroid belt...

Fine. I will not hinder the path of this latest SW meme Johari Nohari

Originally Posted By: Sarachim A law that that heaps disproportionate penalties on a small fraction of violators is effective much the way that fascists are effective railway managers. I highly doubt that Mussolini could make the trains run on a bottle of Jack... Oh, also, Godwin's law.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Actually, TiVo appears to have gotten into huge legal battles over absolutely everything. I wouldn't know... ...I Tivo'd them.

Originally Posted By: Sarachim I have no idea whether any of you are brave, dependable, or religious. You could always base it off our AIMhack characters .