May 05, 2005

• Sorry in andvance for a meatless FPP. I wanted to put more links. But the Wired article sums up very well all that it's to be know about the effect.
• Well, Dvorak thinks America is dumbing down too (as opposed to the dumbing up?) so it must be true! (Actually I agree with him on the people would rather ask than look it up part.). Relating to the article from Wired, I've long thought that people who think things have "changed" think that change is inherently bad and there is way too much "back when I was a kid..." going on. The other night on the Daily Show Stewart was trying to get to some of this with Zell Miller who wrote a book about how good things were "back then" and Stewart kept bring up things like racism and Miller was more interested in those damn kids with their hip and their hop and naughty words! And is the link to page two of the wired article instead of the first page some sort of test? If so, is noticing it passing or not understanding why the second page is more important failing?
• hah! sorry. Having a bad day...
• fixed link!
• well said, jcalhoun. Here is my short list: 1) overpopulation 2) threat of nuclear war 3) man-made damage to environment/depletion of natural resources Everything else in the world has been getting steaily better throughout human history, and we may arguably be turning the corner on 3). and please dont say 9/11. It sucks, but hardly stacks up to WWII, the Crusades, Atilla the Hun etc etc etc etc etc etc
• I'm not sure about 1 or 2 either. population growth is slowing. Some european countries are actually dwindling in population. Nucular war doesn't seem as likely since the main threat now seems to be "terrorists!" rather than a country, so while it might be concievable that a single nuke is detonated (which would be horrific to be sure) I don't think it would end up in a nucular war. I hope you are right about the environment. I'm not so sure.
• The probability of 2) has gone down rather a lot since 1961.